The number of mobile phone subscribers across the country surpassed six crore in July despite the mobile operators’ demand to the government for a cut in SIM taxes.
The active mobile subscriber base reached 61.845 million at the end of July with the leading operator Grameenphone continuing to add large number of clients and state-run Teletalk losing subscribers for the second straight month.
Six mobile operators added 1.865 million subscribers in July as the number of active subscribers was 59.98 million at the end of June. Operators added 9.415 million new users in the first seven months of this year, according to the data released by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Sunday.
Grameenphone’s subscriber base reached 27.276 million as it added 0.816 million clients in July.
Banglalink, the second largest operator, added 0.704 million clients to take its subscriber base to 16.804 million while the total number of Robi subscribers reached to 11.326 million enlisting some 0.226 million clients.
Warid Telecom added 0.126 million subscribers taking the total number to 3.296 million while the lone CDMA operator CityCell added just 0.006 million customers in July taking its subscriber base to 1.996 million.
The lone state-run operator Teletalk lost 0.013 million clients with its subscriber base coming down to 1.147 million in July from 1.16 million in June. Many of the Teletalk clients switched to other efficient operators.
The total number of mobile subscribers was 34.37 million at the end of 2007, 44.64 million in 2008 and 52.43 million in 2009.
Mobile operators said that although the number of subscribers had passed 6.18 crore, the number of people using mobile phone would be less as many of the subscribers use services of multiple operators.
An official of a mobile company claimed that the number of subscribers would have been greater if the government had not imposed the tax of Tk 800 that they have to pay for each SIM.
He claimed that they gave ‘subsidy’ to each new subscriber by selling every SIM at a price much below Tk 800, mainly because of the fierce competition among the mobile operators.
