12 Crore Mobile Users
Telcos say voice market not yet saturated
Country’s mobile phone operators still eye growth opportunities in the voice market despite the fact that the active mobile subscribers in the country have neared 12 crore in a country of 16 crore population. Officials of the mobile phone companies said although the active users officially neared 12 crore but the actual mobile subscribers would be around 8 crore. They also said that the next business focus of the mobile companies would be based on data but the voice was equally important for the Bangladesh market.
According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission data, the active mobile subscribers in the country were 11.96 crore in November.
The subscriber base of the leading mobile phone operator Grameenphone reached to 5.11 crore, that of Banglalink to 3.06 crore, that of Robi to 2.52 crore, that of Airtel to 74.68 lakh, that of Citycell to 13.06 lakh and that of state-run Teletalk reached to 38.05 lakh in the month, showed the BTRC data.
Bangladesh has ranked the 10th largest country in the world in terms of mobile users and out of 100 Bangladeshi more than 77 people are under the telecommunication network, showed a recent report of the International Telecommunication Union.
The World Summit on the Information Society’s 10 years review report on Bangladesh, published in May, also said the mobile population coverage, voice and data, was 99 per cent in the country.
‘Statistically it might look like that the voice market is squeezing but the reality is different. Out of the 12 crore mobile users, many use multiple connections. The actual users could be near seven or eight crore,’
Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh secretary general TIM Nurul Kabir told New Age on Thursday.
He said there was still untapped voice market in the country.
‘The operators will have to penetrate the deep rural market to expand the voice market,’ he said.
Nurul said after the 3G service launch the new market prospect had emerged for the mobile operators.
‘The data market is the key for the future mobile business but there is still scope for voice,’ he said.
Asked, Grameenphone external communication head Syed Talat Kamal said there was still untapped market in the voice segment.
‘The actual mobile users will be less than what the data shows as many use multiple SIMs. There is still scope for growth for the voice market in the deep rural areas,’ he said.
Asked whether the increasing use of apps like Viber or WhatsApp would affect the voice revenue of the operators, he said, ‘Not necessarily. Such apps are mostly used by the urban segment of the subscribers. The overall market still does the talking in the mobile network,’ he said.
A senior official of a mobile company said that the operators earned negligible revenue from the data market.
‘The 3G was launched in September last year and the data revenue is hardly countable. The dominance of voice will remain for the next 5-10 years,’ he said.
-With New Age input
