The market leader mobile phone operator, Grameenphone, will officially declare today its achievement in gaining over five-crore subscriber milestone, a senior official of the company has said.
“We have achieved the biggest milestone we were waiting for over the last couple of months and now are busy celebrating it,” a senior executive of Grameenphone told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday evening, requesting anonymity.
Analysts said for the first time in the country, the mobile operator crossed a five-crore subscriber milestone.
Grameenphone is also going to host a programme to observe the historic milestone in the hotel Westin this morning.
Earlier, the mobile company gained a four-crore active subscriber milestone in September 2012, one crore in November 2006, two crore in January 2008 and three crore in January 2011 in the market.
According to BTRC, currently some 11.76 crore SIMs are active in the country, with 42.51% market share of GP.
Banglalink, the second largest operator in terms of subscribers, recently achieved a three-crore subscriber milestone with 25.46% market share while Robi comes in third with 2.47 crore subscribers having a market share of 20.72%.
Grameenphone, a sister concern of Norwegian company Telenor, started its operation in Bangladesh in 1997.
After its launch, Grameenphone become the market leader in terms of subscribers within a very short time.
Currently, Telenor owns 55.8% of Grameenphone while 34.2% share belongs to Grameen Telecom and the rest to general retailers and institutional investors.
Telenor is the 14th largest operator in the global market with 17 crore subscribers globally while Grameenphone is the largest of all the Telenor subsidiaries.
The operator fulfilled its first 15 years licence tenure in 2011 for 2G, and renewed it for the next 15 years.
Last year, Grameenphone was also awarded a 3G licence and had already deployed its network in all 64 districts.
GP currently has around 13 lakh 3G subscribers of which more than 1.2 crore use internet with either 3G or 2G network, said sources.
Operator sources added that the mobile company has some offers for its subscribers to celebrate the five crore milestone.
Over the last two months we have been offering different modern services like free facebook and minutes back when call drops, a senior executive of the operator also said.
