The number of active mobile phone users of the country increased by 1.20 lakh in February, extending the uptrend for second month, as the operators have overcome the shock of the tough SIM registration process.
Among the six mobile phone operators, subscribers of Citycell declined in February when rest of the operators witnessed a rise in the subscriber’s base.
According to the latest data of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, the total active subscribers of the country increased to 9.85 crore at the end February from 9.73 crore in January.
Officials of mobile phone companies said the total number of active subscribers had increased as the operators were fighting back in track after facing the initial shock of BTRC’s tight SIM registration process.
They said the industry faced a three-month phase setback due to BTRC’s new SIM registration process, which was effective from October 2012, when many of the users had either put off multiple SIMs or closed down some of their connections.
The BTRC asked all mobile phone companies not to sell any pre-activated connections and only activate the SIMs after completion of registration in a bid to stop ‘criminal activities’ by using mobile phones.
The market leader Grameenphone added 66 thousand subscribers in February taking the total subscribers to 4.10 crore after adding 3.15 lakh in January. The GP lost 2.23 lakh subscribers in December and around 6.5 lakh in previous two months.
The total number of subscribers of Banglalink increased by 23 thousand in February taking the total subscribers to 2.58 crore after declining by 2.73 lakh in January. Banglalink lost 10 lakh subscribers in the previous three months.
Robi’s subscribers increased by 15 thousand in February to 2.12 crore after adding 97 thousand subscribers in January. In December Robi had lost 77 thousand subscribers.
Airtel’s subscribers increased to 73 lakh in February by adding 15 thousand users in the month after it added 97 thousand subscribers in January. Airtel added 2.81 lakh subscribers in the previous four months.
Citycell’s subscribers declined to 14.59 lakh in February by losing 5 thousand users in the month. Citycell lost 1.70 lakh subscribers in the previous four months.
The subscriber-base of state-run mobile operator Teletalk increased by 4 thousand to 16.92 lakh in February after the subscriber’s base of the company remained flat in January.
In December Teletalk added 2.82 lakh users which is also the total addition in three months. (Source)
No comments:
Post a Comment