Bangladesh continues to witness a rise in the number of broadband connections according to the latest data from Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
However, despite an 8.34% year-on-year increase in the number of mobile internet users in January 2022 mobile operators have lost 1.96 million customers in the last month.
Currently, 111.77 million subscribers use the internet through handheld devices which stood at 113.73 million in December 2021, while 10.1 million rely on broadband connections, which stood at 10.09 million in December 2021.
Which means, the number of mobile internet subscribers dropped 1.7 % month-on-month in January to 111.77 million, while broadband subscribers saw 10,000 more new clients over the last one month, according to the latest data from BTRC.
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.
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.
“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,” the Minister further added.
This has been evident, as the number of customers of the state-owned Teletalk, rose by 24% year-on-year in January reaching 6.87 million, adding 100,000 more customers than in December 2021.
According to BTRC data, state-owned operator Teletalk added about 1.7 million customers in 2021, with a 35% year-on-year growth in the month of December reaching a total of 6.7 million customers.
Banglalink also grew its customer numbers by 5.35% year-on-year in January to reach 3.74 crore, adding 200,000 new customers from the previous month.
However, market leaders like GrameenPhone and Robi Axiata, the first and second-largest market players, both lost customers.
Robi lost about 100,000 customers in January compared to that a month earlier, whereas
Grameenphone lost over 400,000 customers in January this year compared to that a month earlier.
