Economic recession hits cell phone industry

Dhaka: The growth of cell phone companies dropped in August for the first time in Bangladesh, one of the world's fastest-growing markets for mobile phones, with operators attributing it to the current economic slowdown.

Cell phone operators and newspaper reports said the number of new subscribers in August fell by 500,000 compared to that of July.

"Economic slowdown hit the growth of the mobile industry," secretary general of the Association of Mobile Operators in Bangladesh, Khalid Hassan, said.

"Six cell phone operators managed to add 600,000 customers in August against 1.1 million in July this year," the Financial Express newspaper reported, quoting a senior Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) official as saying.

He said in June the six cell phone operators, with Grameenphone being on top, added 1.66 million customers.

He added that the new additions, however, raised the total number of mobile phone subscribers in the country to 45.4 million in August.

According to BTRC data, the top three operators maintained their usual growth, with Grameenphone, majority of which is owned by Norway's Telenor, holding the top position in the market with 20.84 million customers, followed by Egyptian Orascom Telecom's Banglalink with 10.17 million subscribers and AKTEL, with a majority owned by Telekom Malaysia International, with 7.3 million customers.

The number of customers of Citycell, the only CDMA carrier in the country, reached 1.68 million in July, compared to 1.67 million in June.

Decline in demand

But the number of customers for the state-run TeleTalk, which was 1.07 million in June, fell to 0.93 million in July and 0.89 million in August.

Warid Telecom International of the UAE gained 200,000 customers, compared to 170,000 in July, followed by Citycell's 200,000 according to August figures.

The number of mobile phone users in the country of more than 140 million people grew as rivals cut prices to compete, while several market surveys have forecast that the number of cell phone users will be around 50 million by the end of 2008.