Bangladesh has over 114 million mobile subscribers

According to the mobile subscriber data coming from Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission or the BTRC, the country’s mobile base grew to 114.81 million in January 2014 from 113.78 million a month earlier.

Reflecting this growth, Grameenphone led the market with 47.64 million customers, up from 47.11 million, followed by Banglalink with 28.93 million subscribers, up from 28.84 million in December 2013. Additionally, Robi Axiata ended the month with 25.61 million subscribers versus 25.38 million, and India’s Airtel served 8.26 million mobile subscribers, which is slightly down from 8.27 million.

According to data from BTRC, Citycell's customer base increased to 1.38 million from 1.37 million while state-run mobile operator Teletalk saw its customer base rise to 2.98 million from 2.82 million in December.

It is important to note that the liberalisation of Bangladesh’s telecommunications sector is prompting the increase in telecoms and communications infrastructure in the country which began with small steps in 1989.

Significant changes in the number of fixed and mobile services deployed in Bangladesh occurred in the late 1990s and the number of services in operation have subsequently grown exponentially in the last five years timeframe.

The incentives both from government and public sectors have helped to grow this sector in the country and as a result, it is now one of the biggest sectors in Bangladesh contributing heavily to the overall GDP of the nation. As a populous country, it is becoming a huge market for the telecom infrastructure providers as well as telecom service operators and has attracted many foreign investors to invest in this sector as well.

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