Dhaka: Bangladesh witnessed sizzling growth in its tele-density of 146 per cent in the past four months with the addition of nearly four million subscribers since January, officials and reports said Saturday.
Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) officials said 3.93 million new mobile phone users were added between January and April, a growth of 146 per cent over the same period last year.
"The total number of mobile phone active subscribers reached 56.36 million at the end of April 2010," a BTRC spokesman told Gulf News.
Quoting Post and Telecommunications Minister Rajiuddin Ahmad the Financial Express newspaper said the new figure showed the mobile phone industry turned the corner after two years of stagnation in 2008 and 2009 as the companies were wooing more clients with aggressive marketing and improved services.
Stability
"A stable political environment boosted the growth," he told the newspaper in an apparent reference to two years of emergency rules until December 2008 under an interim government crucially backed by the military.
But the president of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators Bangladesh (AMTOB) Zakiul Islam said the expansion came at the cost of huge subsidies by the country's six operators.
"For every SIM card we sold to a user, we pay at least 600 taka [Dh31] as subsidy," Islam said, adding that though the operators were selling SIM cards at 150-250 taka each, they pay 800 taka in flat tax to the government for every connection.
He said the impressive growth in the first four months was also boosted by up to 50 per cent cut in call tariffs and launching of array of new packages by the companies.
The latest acquisition by the operators that took the number of subscribers to 56.36 million was still hovering around 38 per cent of the country's nearly 150 million population.
Among the operators, Robi, formerly known as Aktel, was the top seller, adding 1.53 million new connections to take its number to 10.82 million, according to the BTRC.
Position
Grameenphone added 1.29 million users in January-April to retain its pole position with 24.55 million subscribers while Banglalink sold 1.07 million new connections during the same period to keep its second position intact with 14.94 million subscribers.
Warid is yet to see any big leap in the subscriber base as the company's new Bharti Airtel-led management has yet to come up with any major new package.
Citycell was the only one which suffered negative growth as its number of active subscribers fell to 1.89 million from 1.91 million in April despite offering the lowest intra-network call tariffs in the country.
State-owned Teletalk has continued to rank last with 1.13 million users.
