4 lakh users added in the month after March fall
The number of active mobile phone subscribers in the country increased to 11.56 crore in April as private sector operators added four lakh new users in the month after fall in the previous month, showed the latest data of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.
The number had dropped to 11.52 crore in March from 11.58 crore in February.
In March the number of mobile phone subscribers had declined after a 15-month rise as Robi had lost 16.75 lakh subscribers in the month.
Of the six mobile phone companies operating in the country, Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel and Citycell witnessed increase in their subscribers in April while state-run Teletalk saw a fall.
Leading operator Grameenphone added 1.64 lakh subscribers in the month and took its total subscribers’ base to 4.88 crore.
Banglalink added 83,000 users in April, taking its total subscribers’ base to 2.94 crore.
After losing huge number of users in the previous month, Robi added 1.26 lakh subscribers in April and took its users’ base to 2.40 crore.
The subscribers’ base of Airtel reached to 85.03 lakh in April as the company added 95,000 users in the month.
Citycell added 11,000 subscribers in the month and took its subscribers’ base to 14.25 lakh.
Teletalk lost 92,000 users in April that brought down its subscribers’ base to 33.42 lakh.
The mobile phone companies had witnessed sharp fall in their business for three months from October to
December in 2012 after the government had imposed a number of new rules regarding subscriber identity module registration.
The companies, however, recovered the shock after the three months’ downward trend through making convincing offers to their subscribers and the number of total users crossed the 10-crore mark for the first time in April 2013.
The number of active mobile phone subscribers in the country increased by 1.66 crore or 17 per cent in 2013 as the total users of the six mobile operators reached to 11.37 crore at the end of the year.
The BTRC data showed that the total number of mobile phone subscribers had increased by 13.70 per cent in 2012 as the total subscribers were 9.71 crore in December of the year.
-With New Age input
