Mobile-phone users in Bangladesh cross 130 million mark

More than 130 million people, out of Bangladesh’s population of 160 million, use mobile phones while around 50 million people access internet .

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) announced the figures on Thursday amid the ongoing government’s initiative to register millions of unregistered SIMs.

According to the telecoms regulators, the number of mobile subscribers was a little over 130.8 million by the end of August this year, as per the sale of SIM cards.

During the same period last year, the figure was 117.5 million, which means the number of subscribers increased by over 11 percent in one year.

Subscriber base of Grameenphone, which is the largest wireless operator in Bangladesh, reached 55 million in August, which is 1.1 million more than what it had in July.

During the same period, the subscriber base of Banglalink increased by 400,000 to 32.8 million.

Robi and Airtel’s users also increased by 400,000 during the same period to reach 28.3 million and 9.4 million respectively.

However, the country’s lone CDMA operator Citycell lost 27,000 clients. It has now 1.134 million users.

State-owned Teletalk customer base too shrunk to 4.079 million after desertion of around 150,000 subscribers during July-August period.

According to BTRC data, in July last, Bangladesh had 128.7 million mobile users.

The number of internet users reached around 52.2 million in August.

There were 50.7 million mobile internet users in August, which was about 1.5 million more than the July’s figure.

The number of ISP and PSTN internet user, too, increased by about 15,000 to reach 1.308 million.

On the other hand, number of WiMAX internet users dwindled to 168,000 after a loss of 6,000 subscribers.

According to the BTRC, the number of internet users in the country in July last was around 50.7 million as against 40.8 million in August last year. 

This means the number has increased by more than 27 percent in one year.