1cr unregistered SIMs blocked in crackdown
The telecom industry lost more than one crore subscribers in August alone after the regulator decided to deactivate connections that were not verified biometrically.
The total number of active mobile connections stood at 11.84 crore at the end of August, down from 12.89 crore in July.
The decline is nothing to be worried about as there was a huge duplication in the customer database earlier, said Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.
"This decline will not affect the industry -- that's for sure. Now, we have got a clean and authentic database of our mobile users."
TIM Nurul Kabir, secretary general of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh, echoed the same.
"We expected this to happen. We are in a transformation stage and operators are so far okay with it," Kabir added.
Of the deactivated SIMs, about 88 lakh had active internet connection -- a development that will have a negative impact on mobile data usage.
The tally of active mobile internet connections stood at 5.12 crore at the close of August, down from previous month's 6.01 crore.
In December last year, the government made it mandatory to biometrically re-register all SIMs.
The process continued until May 31 this year, and from June the operators began deactivating the unregistered SIMs.
Some 11.60 crore SIMs were verified biometrically until May 31; a few lakh SIMs were re-registered after the deadline by paying a penalty, BTRC officials said.
Meanwhile, state-owned Teletalk blocked 23 lakh SIMs in August, according to a parliamentary standing committee report.
If a SIM is not used in 90 days, it will be declared inactive, according to the regulations.
The telecom regulator is yet to publish its monthly report on SIM connections for August, though they collected information from all operators three weeks ago.
Usually, the regulator publishes the monthly report within two weeks; this time, the report is taking longer as there is a huge fall in the numbers and several updates, said a BTRC official. The BTRC has placed the report before its chairman for his approval before making it public.
The decline in the official figure will definitely push back the country in terms of world rankings, BTRC officials said.
As of June, Bangladesh has the 10th largest number of mobile subscribers in the world. The country's mobile penetration rate of 84 percent and the mobile internet penetration of about 40 percent will nosedive because of the government move against unregistered SIMs, industry experts said.