I remember standing in “Bashundhara City" one afternoon in late 2004, watching a young-man chatting on his mobile phone with total ease. Only a year earlier, that was a luxury reserved mostly for well-offs.
During that instant, it felt like the digital divide had vanished. SIM prices had plummeted from thousands to hundreds, and sudden competition changed everything.
At that point, Bangladesh made a choice to connect the millions, previously left behind. The moment those doors opened to set the course for how our digital world would evolve over the next two decades.
History repeated itself on September 1, 2025. Robi and Grameenphone launched commercial 5G services just hours apart, signaling another massive shift in the nation’s digital connectivity. It was a modest beginning with a handful of towers, limited initial coverage but a concrete step into the next generation of digital connectivity after years of spectrum disputes, policy delays and regulatory uncertainty.
Banglalink, the third-largest operator, had delayed its commercial launch due to their internal requirements. Teletalk, the state-owned operator, had conducted a symbolic experimental demonstration at six locations back in December 2021 but has yet to follow-up with a commercial rollout, despite holding both spectrum and a unified license.
This picture shows uneven progress: Two operators moving forward, one preparing, and one still finding its footing. But regardless of who’s in the lead, the sector must deal with some hard truths if 5G is going to be more than just a flashy headline.
The telecom success story
Before discussing what needs to change, we must acknowledge what Bangladesh’s telecom sector has achieved so far. With approximately 185 million active mobile subscribers, the country has built one of the largest connected populations in South Asia.
The mobile financial ecosystem that runs on top of this infrastructure is extraordinary in its reach: bKash alone serves over 82 million customers as of December 2025.
This has helped the farmer in a rural district who receives payment for his harvest digitally, the garment worker whose wage arrives on her phone, the small trader who has never opened a formal bank account but manages his finances through mobile money.
All of these were born from networks built by the operators who kept digging, even when the money was tight and the odds were not fully in favour.
The average monthly mobile data consumption per user in Bangladesh has increased from 1.2 GB/month in 2020 to 6.4 GB in 2024, finally reaching 8.2 GB in 2025. The appetite for digital services is growing. 4G now covers 95% of the population. Median download speedscrossed 31 Mbps at the start of 2026, meeting BTRC’s new quality benchmarks. These are real accomplishments, and laid the foundation for building the next chapter.
A stagnation by design
And yet, the sector is not growing anymore. Average revenue per user has declined by 56% over the past decade and now sits at approximately $1.30/month -- among the lowest in the world. Banglalink serves roughly 40 million subscribers and yet has not posted a profitable year in 26 consecutive years of operation. Robi took 21 years to reach profitability and now operates on a 7% margin after meeting its tax obligations. Even Grameenphone, the market leader, could only reinvest Tk1,830 crore into its network against a Tk 15,845 crore turnover, a ratio that analysts consider dangerously thin for a sector with the infrastructure demands that 5G will bring.
Subscribers and revenue moving in opposite directions is a warning sign. Between June 2024 and January 2025, Bangladesh lost 13.2 million mobile internet users, not by vanished demand, but largely due to affordability during a period of economic strain.
Part of the explanation lies in the fiscal structure that the sector carries. Altogether, approximately Tk0.56 from every taka generated in this sector flows to the government in taxes, fees and charges while consumers spend around 6-7% of their monthly income on mobile data according to GSMA, far above the global affordability benchmark of 2%.
This is not a sustainable foundation for a digital economy; recalibration of the approach is a must to unlock greater long-term value for a nation's broader ambitions.
Research shows that for LDCs, every 10% increase in mobile penetration can generate a 2.5% to 2.8% increase in GDP per capita. But a sector left with razor-thinmargins squeezed by heavy taxes simply cannot invest in the infrastructure those growth numbers require.
There is also the question of policy clarity. BTRC took nearly two years after the spectrum auction to publish its 5G guideline, and the 700 MHz auction process where rules were revised less than two weeks before the event and only one operator ultimately participated.
Although these challenges aren’t hard to overcome, addressing them requires constructive and open dialogue. We need a new deal to win back the investors. A regulatory overhaul to simplify the country’s complex telecom landscape might bring a fresh start.
The playbook beyond our borders
Several countries that have experienced similar challenges have navigated them successfully. India presents the closest comparable.
By 2019, Indian operators were severely financially strained from years of tariff-war and hefty regulatory charges. The government then made a deliberate choice to step back and treat telecom as strategic infrastructure by reducing its effective tax burden. It also offered payment moratoriums on spectrum fees and created greater policy stability.
The turnaround was striking: Operators reinvested, rolled out commercial 5G in October 2022, and by early 2025 had over 250 million active 5G subscribers and 469,000 base stations. The annual sector capex in India was $14 billion in 2024.
The South Korean experience is slightly different but equally useful. Rather than simply reducing taxes, they developed an entire policy framework around treating broadband and 5G as national infrastructure. The government investednearly 1% of GDP in R&D in the 1980s that eventually accelerated the telecom sector, mandated infrastructure sharing to eliminate duplicated investment, and kept spectrum pricing competitive.
When 5G arrived, operators were required to share deployment costs for rural coverage, saving the industry an estimated $938 million over ten years, while achieving nationwide 5G coverage by April 2024. The result is one of the fastest, most pervasive 5G networks in the world and generating far more tax revenue from a thriving digital economy than could ever be clawed back from the operators directly.
Malaysia offers a third model, a more recent one with an important lesson about the limits of any single network strategy. In 2021, Malaysia set up Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) as a state-owned wholesale 5G entity that would build one shared network for all operators to use.
The idea was elegant: Reduce the deployment costs by eliminating duplicate infrastructure and rolling out faster. By early 2024, DNB had achieved 80% population coverage and Malaysia’s 5G median download speed was among the highest in South-East Asia. 5G subscriptions surged six-fold in two years to reach 28.7 million by November 2025.
But as the network scaled, a shared single infrastructure showed its limits: All operators sharing the same radio network meant capacity pressures affected everyone at once, and speeds began to slip. They recognized the issue and transitioned to a dual-network model from January 2025, introducing competition at the infrastructure layer while retaining the coverage gains of the original shared rollout.
Both Bangladesh and Malaysia prioritize infrastructure sharing to drive connectivity. Bangladesh utilizes four licensed tower companies: EDOTCO, Summit Tower, Kirtonkhola, and Frontier Tower to provide shared passive infrastructure for its mobile operators. Malaysia established its model much earlier, using their regulator, MCMC-licensed, state-backed tower companies since the early 2000s, long before 5G was on the horizon.
While both nations embraced passive sharing early, saving costs on towers and backhaul, Malaysia’s experience at the “active” network layer is the real lesson for Bangladesh. Malaysia proves that while infrastructure sharing is efficient, managing the active layer is essential for service quality.
Bangladesh’s Robi-Banglalink active RAN sharing arrangement, which is projected to save both operators a combined $120 million in capex over three years while extending 4G coverage, is a promising local example that strikes the right balance: Cooperative infrastructure, competitive services.
That is the architecture Bangladesh should deliberately build on as 5G rolls out. Expanding such arrangements, with active regulatory backing, could meaningfully change the economics of 5G rollout in Bangladesh.
A shared strategy for growth
The path from stagnation to growth does not require any single dramatic act. It requires steady, aligned progress across three key fronts.
Cutting supplementary duties on mobile recharges and slashing corporate tax rates may instantly unlock capital for network upgrades. As Indian or South Korea examples, it’s smarter to grow the revenue pie than to fight for a bigger slice of a shrinking one.
The migration to a new framework could help reset that relationship, building the kind of collaborative bridge between regulator and industry that defines the world’s successful telecom markets.
These aren't futuristic concepts; they are the current reality in neighboring markets where operators have evolved from selling gigabytes to building the digital backbone.
With a massive subscriber base and a solid foundation already in place, Bangladesh’s operators are ready to compete, they just need the economic breathing room to hit the ‘paddle’.
Riding the next wave
It is undeniable that a massive shift has been underway since the early 2000s push to liberalize the telecom market. It faced caution and calls for protection, but that bold decision ultimately transformed the nation’s digital connectivity.
We are now at another turning point. Technology is ready and the demand will continue to surge. Operators have taken the first steps, but success now requires the government, the regulator, and the industry to align on one truth: Telecom is not just a revenue line to be optimized, but a strategic national asset to be grown.
The countries that have made this shift have never looked back. The foundation for Bangladesh becoming a global digital leader is already being built, the only question is whether we choose it to stall or empower it to thrive. That choice must be made by design, not by default.
Dr Sabbir Ahmad is an engineering and corporate leader with extensive global experience in digital connectivity, energy infrastructure, and sustainable development. He can be reached at [email protected].
