Private land phone firms get good responses

The photo shows RanksTel stall at Dhaka International Trade Fair yesterday. Private land phone operators are receiving good responses from visitors at the annual event.Photo: STAR

Private land phone operators are receiving good responses from visitors at the annual Dhaka International Trade Fair (DITF).
"We are receiving very enthusiastic visitors everyday at the fair and we sell at least 50 phones everyday,” an official of Dhaka Telephone Company Ltd, a PSTN (public switched telephone network) operator, said yesterday.
Officials of RanksTel, the largest private PSTN operator in the country with over one lakh subscribers, are also happy with sales at the fair.
"We sell between 30 and 50 units every day from the fair,” said Javed Parvez, executive (sales) of Ranks Telecom Limited.
The officials of the private land phone operators at the DITF said growth is increasing now. The subscription base of the private land phones reached around near 2 lakh in 2007.
In recent days, the private land phone companies have started growing to challenge the state-run Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) that has over 10 lakh land phone customers across the country.
In the face of the growing competitions, the BTTB reduced phone connection fees twice in the last 18 months.
At present, 5 private companies offer land phone services across the country.
The DITF is a yearly programme of Bangladesh government, which mainly aims to showcase local products to foreign buyers. The Ministry of Commerce and Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) are jointly organising the fair at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in the city.
This year a total of 395 organisations, including 15 from seven foreign countries, are taking part in the fair. The foreign participants include firms from India, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand, USA, UK, Japan and Turkey.
Entry fee of the fair has been fixed at Tk 10 for each adult and Tk 5 for children. The fair will remain open from 10am to 9pm on weekdays and from 10am to 10pm on holidays.
Organisers expected the participating companies would get Tk 50 crore worth of spot orders from the show from local and foreign traders with a further Tk 500 crore generated in follow-up business.