Mobile voice and internet subscribers drop in pandemic

The number of mobile phone and internet subscribers in Bangladesh has gone down and experts believe it is due the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of mobile subscribers of all operators combined went down by 2.41 million in April, compared to the number in March, The number of internet users dropped by 2.06 million in the same period, according to data from the BTRC.

Despite a drop of 1.46 percent in mobile subscription and a 2 percent decline in mobile internet use, there has been no significant change in the users of broadband and PSTN.

“The people are not too interested in getting new connections in this situation. But this could be a temporary thing. On the other hand, people’s tendency to use SIMs of different operators has also gone down,” said Zakir Hossain Khan, the senior assistant director of BTRC.

SM Farhad, the secretary general of Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh, or AMTOB, said: “Like in many other sectors, the pandemic has also been impacting the mobile operators over the last few months. Mobile and internet subscription rates went down and people have also been talking less in comparison.”

Shahed Alam, chief corporate and regulatory officer of Robi Axiata Ltd, the operator with the second highest number of subscribers, said, “The sales points were closed during the lockdown. Connections become inactive if not used for 90 days, SIMs can be shut off if not recharged for too long.

“Many apparel factory workers left Dhaka (when the shutdown was enforced), they may have shut down their SIMs. It could also be a result of the financial effect of the coronavirus.”

Shahed pointed out that the overall usage of the internet had actually gone up. “Many people used to two or three SIMs. They may have shut one down and began using the internet with another,” he said. 

According to BTRC, Grameenphone topped the list of operators in March with 75.33 million subscribers. But their user base dropped to 74.36 million at the end of April.

The tally of Robi subscribers stood at 49.71 million at the end of March and dropped to 48.84 million a month later. On the other hand, Banglalink subscribers dropped from 35.37 million to 34.87 million and state-owned operator Teletalk's subscriber base fell from 4.91 million to 4.84 million in the same period.

In February, the number of internet users through the mobile phone networks was 94.23 million, which rose to 95.16 million at the end of March but dropped to 93.1 million over the following month.

The number of internet subscribers through Internet Service Providers or ISPs and Public Switched Telephone Networks or PSTNs stood at 8.08 million in March, more than in February, when it was 5.74 million. The figure did not undergo significant changes in April.