The number of mobile subscribers in December rose about 6% year-on-year to 181 million, while the number of internet users rose 10.73 % year-on-year to 123.8 million in December, according to the latest data from Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
Robi Axiata, the second-largest operator, reached 53.6 million users in December last year, which was 50.9 million in 2020.
Banglalink grew 5.6 % year-on-year in December to take the number of customers to 37.2 million.
On the other hand, market leader Grameenphone's total mobile phone customers jumped 5.56 % to 83.4 million in December 2021 from 79 million in December 2020.
This indicates that mobile operators in the country are still acquiring new consumers despite crossing the country’s population demographic, which means individuals are using more than one SIM.
Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar told Dhaka Tribune: “The pandemic has been significantly responsible for the rise in both internet and mobile phone users, as we saw an ecosystem developing during the lockdown periods, where all sorts of services were consumed through the digital space, with rapid adoption.
“Naturally, people ended up buying more SIMS and even new devices to enable their children to take online classes,” the minister explained.
He also said that there has been a huge rise in bandwidth consumption, as schools, offices and businesses started operating in the digital space and it was possible to cater to such demand due to the supporting-infrastructure growth.
Currently, 113.7 million subscribers use the internet through handheld devices while the rest rely on internet service providers and public switched telephone network operators.
“We established around 587 free wifi zones across different areas to provide internet access to school-going students. We have also taken the government-owned mobile network Teletalk to the most remote areas where other mobile operators have not reached and invested heavily on infrastructure development from social development funds which gave us good results,” Mustafa Jabbar further added.
According to BTRC data, state-owned operator Teletalk added about 1.7 million customers in 2021, a 35% year-on-year growth in the month of December reaching a total of 6.7 million customers.
While other private operators lost customers in December compared to November, Teletalk gained customers in 2021.
