The active mobile phone users of the country reached to near 12 crore in November as the six mobile operators added more than seven lakh new subscribers in the month.
The latest data of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission showed that the total mobile users reached to 11.96 crore in November when Citycell lost customers and Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel and state-run Teletalk added new customers.
The mobile phone users of the country crossed the 10-crore mark for the first time in April 2013.
In September 2012, the number of total mobile users had hit 9.85-crore mark but because of tightening of the SIM registration process by the BTRC the growth tumbled.
Leading operator GP added more than 4 lakh new subscribers in November which took its total subscriber-base to 5.11 crore.
The subscribers of Banglalink, second largest operator, reached to 3.06 crore in the month as the operator added more than 2 lakh new subscribers.
Robi added one lakh new subscribers in November which took its total subscriber-base to 2.52 crore.
Airtel added 2,000 new subscribers in November, after losing more than 10 lakh subscribers in previous four months, which took its total subscriber-base to 74.68 lakh.
Teletalk’s total subscriber-base reached to 38.05 lakh in November as the operator added around 20,000 new subscribers in the month.
Citycell lost 23,000 subscribers in the month which pushed down its total subscriber-base to 13.06 lakh in November.
Bangladesh issued its first mobile licence in 1993 but the growth had been slow in the first 10 years, with the total number of subscribers reaching just 15 lakh in early 2003.
The mobile market started growing rapidly in 2003 and the number of mobile users hit 5 crore in 2009.
-With New Age input
