Slack sales for mobile operators in August
Mobile phone operators added a mere 0.94 million customers to their networks in August 2009, as customers were awaiting new offers by the operators in September.
However, industry insiders said sales rose significantly in September as a majority number of operators came forward with new offers during mid Ramadan.
According to Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission (BTRC) statistics released yesterday, the six mobile operators provided mobile phone services to 48.91 million subscribers till August 2009. The total number of mobile phone subscribers was 47.97 million in July.
The top mobile operator, Grameenphone, lost 0.02 million customers in August. The company's sales dropped, as it did not lower connection charges, while some other operators cut connection rates from Tk 800 to below Tk 300.
BTRC statistics show that the total number of customers for Grameenphone dropped to 21.13 million in August from 21.15 million in July 2009.
The number of subscribers for the market's second largest operator, Banglalink, reached 11.9 million in August, up from 11.27 million in July.
AKTEL crossed the 10 million subscriber mark in August, rising from 9.90 million in July.
Warid totalled 2.63 million customers, Citycell recorded 1.97 million and TeleTalk recorded 1.08 million in August 2009.
Despite a 32 percent penetration rate for Bangladesh, there are debates over how many people actually use the mobile phone.
Zakiul Islam, president of Association of Mobile Telecom Operators in Bangladesh, said the telecom regulator should come forward with a unified subscriber reporting format so that the actual number of users can be seen.
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