Bandwidth consumption doubles to 2,409.08Gbps
The number of broadband and mobile phone-based internet connections in the past fiscal year of 2020-2021 increased by 1.75 crore, more than twice the increase seen in the previous fiscal year, amid people’s growing dependence on online services after the Covid outbreak.
According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission data, the number of internet connections in the country reached 12.1 crore at the end of June 2021 from 10.35 crore at the end of June 2020.
In the FY 2019-20, the number of internet connections in the country increased by 72.77 lakh.
Of the 12.1 crore internet connections, 11.09 crore were mobile phone-based and the rest 1.01 crore broadband internet connections.
Since the Covid outbreak in the country in March 2020, a large section of people have become completely dependent on internet for their official activities as the pandemic has forced the government to impose movement restrictions in different phases.
Another segment of people have completely dependent on online to avail services like healthcare, banking and shopping.
With the growing number of users, the usage of data in the country increased to 2,409.08Gbps at the end of April 2021 from 1,137.96Gbps in January 2020, showed the BTRC data.
From January 2020 to April 2021, international bandwidth usage increased by 1,271.12Gbps, more than double the usage in January 2020.
Although the number of internet users increased significantly, the country’s mobile internet speed was ranked the 135th out of 137 countries in June 2021.
Bangladesh’s internet speed was only ahead of Afghanistan and Venezuela.
The country’s mobile internet speed was 12.48 Mbps and upload speed was 7.98 Mbps.
Telecom operators in the United Arab Emirates provided the fastest mobile internet in the world and its download speed was more than 193.51 Mbps in June.
In terms of broadband speed, Bangladesh ranked the 98th out of 181 countries with the users of the country’s broadband users downloading data at the rate of 38.27Mbps and uploading data at the rate of 37.22Mbps.
Apart from the sharp increase in the number of internet connections, the number of mobile phone connections also increased by 1.52 crore from June-end of 2020 to June-end of 2021.
At the end of June 2021, the total active mobile phone connections increased to 17.64 crore from 16.13 crore a year ago.
Of the mobile phone operators, leading mobile phone company Grameenphone acquired the highest, 74.99 lakh subscribers, in the period.
With this, GP’s customer base increased to 8.2 crore from 7.45 crore.
Robi Axiata Limited added 38.63 lakh subscribers in FY21 to take its subscriber base to 5.18 crore from 4.8 crore.
Banglalink’s subscriber base increased to 3.66 crore, up 25.3 lakh on 3.40 crore a year ago.
The number of subscribers of Teletalk increased by 12.23 lakh to 59.8 lakh at the end of June 2021 from 47.57 lakh at the end of June 2020.
-With New Age input
