Star Business Report
The country’s six mobile phone operators added 10.27 million customers in 2008, posting a 30 percent growth compared to a 62 percent growth recorded in 2007.
The operators blamed the subscriber downfall on economic slowdown and increased connection fees.
Bangladesh’s total mobile subscribers reached 44.64 million by the end of December 2008, which was 34.37 million at the end of 2007, according to Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission (BTRC) statistics.
The subscriber acquisition growth was 103 percent and 62 percent in 2006 and 2007 respectively. The operators added 10.76 million customers in 2006 and 13.17 million in 2007.
According to statistics, Grameenphone still holds the first position adding 4.51 million customers in 2008. The company’s total subscribers were 20.99 million as of December 2008, which were 16.48 million in December 2007.
Banglalink added 3.25 million customers and AKTEL 1.8 million in 2008. Banglalink has become the second market leader with 10.33 million customers followed by AKTEL’s 8.20 million by December 2008.
“This growth came primarily in the first half of the year. Due to a detailed mandatory registration process and high SIM tax leading to higher start-up fees from the operators, the number of new subscribers was marginal in the second half of 2008,” said Oddvar Hesjedal, chief executive officer of Grameenphone.
“Further growth in 2009 will depend on reduction in or withdrawal of the SIM tax, but even more on the development of the Bangladeshi economy in relation to the global economic crisis,” he said.
Industry insiders consider the people of 15 and 65-plus years age groups as prospective customers, with most living in untapped rural areas.
Much of the future growth will come from the financially constrained segments, and the SIM (subscriber identity module) tax is a major barrier to this growth, said the industry people.
Due to higher SIM tax operators were also reluctant to offer friendly packages targeting the rural customers. Operator’s marketing strategy in 2008 was mainly concentrated on activating unused old connection rather than offering new packages.
The top operators hiked pre-paid SIM card prices to Tk 400 and post-paid SIM card prices to Tk 1,000 from the average price of Tk 150 in the middle of 2008.
The increased connection price reflects operators’ intention of not bearing anymore the burden of Tk 800 in tax on each SIM card, which they said customers should pay.
The market’s last entrance Warid Telecom placed third in terms of subscriber acquisition in 2008, adding 0.18 million customers followed by lone CDMA operator Citycell’s 0.40 million and state-run TeleTalk’s 0.13 million.
By the end of 2008, Warid customers reached 2.33 million, Citycell’s 1.81 million and TeleTalk’s 0.98 million.
Courtesy: thedailystar.net
