Mobile phone operator Grameenphone had been incorporating over 14,000 subscribers into its volume every day over the last eight years, according to data from 2006 onwards.
In November 2006, the market leader achieved one crore subscriber milestone, and more four crore subsequently by 84 months in last September.
GP officially declared its total number of subscribers at a press conference in Dhaka yesterday.
Exchanging views with the Dhaka Tribune, Grameenphone Chief Executive Officer Vivek Sood said: “I am really wondering about the number of SIMs added to our network every day over the past years.”
“Not many countries in the world and not even many companies as well across the globe can achieve what we did today.”
The CEO focuses on gaining another five crore internet subscriber milestone within the next three to four years alongside the SIMs volume.
The market leader operator already declared “internet for all” programme to bring its subscribers under the GP internet service.
Grameenphone currently has around 85 lakh internet users and 55 lakh of them use 3G.
At the press conference, Grameenphone Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Allan Bonke also declared that they would double the internet speed for all of their 3G subscribers and give an offer of 5 paisa/10 seconds to their valued five crore subscribers from October 15 to 20.
GP started its business in March 1997 in Bangladesh and achieved five crore active subscribers in the third week of September with a market share of 42.51%.
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.
“I am happy to say that we have not wavered and still strive towards ensuring the best services for our customers and our customers remain our utmost priority,” said Vivek.
Currently, there are 11.76 core active SIMs in the country according to the telecom regulator.
Recently Banglalink achieved a three-crore subscriber milestone with 25.46% market share while Robi comes in third with 2.47 crore subscribers.
At the press conference, GP also awarded its first subscriber Laily Begum and 5th crore subscriber.
The CEO said they had been investing close to Tk1,200 crore every year for development of their network and the amount of investment will increase to develop the network quality.
Grameenphone, a sister concern of the Norwegian company Telenor, owns 55.8% share of the operator 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.
The Grameenphone network currently has more than 8,600 base stations in operation, bringing 99% of the population under its coverage.
At the press conference, GP took pride in stating that it was the first of all mobile operators to introduce prepaid service and international roaming service in 1999, WAP service in 2000 and EDGE service in 2005.
It is the only mobile operator in the country that has offloaded its share in 2009.
