The amount of mobile subscribers in the country grew for the second straight month in February, with all but Teletalk seeing this growth.
Operators gained about 1.8 million customers in February, taking the total to 182.6 million, according to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
The growth is expected to motivate the local telecom sector as operators lost about 3.5 million customers in the latter half of last year.
Third-placed operator Banglalink continued to be the top performer in customer acquisition securing 710,000 new customers while Grameenphone added 580,000 and Robi Axiata 530,000.
Banglalink, which crossed a milestone of four crore subscribers in January, had 40.8 million customers by the end of February.
On a year-on-year basis, the number of customers of the operator grew by 8.35%, the highest among the operators.
As per Ookla's Speedtest Intelligence report, Banglalink delivered the fastest average download speed among the top local mobile network operators with 19 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2022.
With 580,000 new customers in February, top operator Grameenphone took its total number of customers to almost 80 million.
Although it failed to attract a large pool of customers after a sales ban on its SIMs was lifted in early January, the good performance in January is a sign of relief for the operator.
Earlier on June 29, the telecom regulator banned Grameenphone's SIM sales until it improved its quality of service, including bringing down the call drop rate.
The ban was eventually lifted on January 2.
During the six-month ban period, it lost almost 5 million customers, taking a toll on the country's total mobile subscriber base and undermining the government's digital connectivity ambition.
With new 530,000 customers, second largest operator Robi's subscriber numbers stood at 55.1 million in February.
State-owned Teletalk lost about 10,000 customers in February, taking its customer numbers to 6.67 million.