The country's mobile operators added 1.1million new customers in July, showing slow growth compared to previous months.
The new addition raised the total number of cell phone users to 44.8 million, according to telecom regulator's statistics released yesterday. The subscriber acquisition number came down to 0.56million in July compared to the month before. In the month of June, the six operators added 1.66million customers.
Industry insiders said customers are reluctant to buy new connections ahead of the Eid as they are waiting for operators to offer cheaper festival packages during the holy month of Ramadan.
According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) data, Grameenphone maintained its usual trend by adding 0.53million customers in July followed by Banglalink's 0.44million and AKTEL's 0.13million.
Of the bottom three, Warid Telecom gained a lot, acquired 0.17 million customers, while Citycell and TeleTalk's subscriber figure slipped 0.03million and 0.14 million respectively in July.
The country's oldest and only CDMA operator Citycell customers reached 1.67million in July, which was 1.70 million in June. The stare run TeleTalk's customer number was 1.07million in June which decreased to 0.93million in July.
The top three operators however maintained their usual growth, Grameenphone holds the top position in the market with 20.84 million customers, followed by Egyptian Orascom Telecom's Banglalink with 9.90 million and AKTEL, Telekom Malaysia International being its major stakeholder, with 7.98 million customers as of July.
"The mobile phone subscriber base will regain next month as lot of new packages may hit the market," said a high official of a top mobile phone company, adding continuous tariff reduction may also increase the number to 50million by the year-end.
The July data showed that the market's new entrant Warid has grabbed the number three position in terms of subscriber acquisition, passing its close competitor AKTEL. AKTEL lost its second position last year to Banglalink, while the latter is still at number two in the six-operator market.
Source: thedailystar.net
