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Wireless Federation » archive for 'Bangladesh'

Sistema plans to branch out in Bangladesh and China.

  • July 16th, 2008
  • 2:11 pm

Sistema, the largest diversified consumer services corporation of Russia is planing to expand its mobile services to Bangladesh and China. Sistema, reportedly acquired licenses for mobile services in border areas of China and is in talks to acquire a local operator in Bangladesh. According to Interfax, Vladimir Evtushenkov, the main owner of Sistema, told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the plans.Sistema which holds majority of shares in Russian operators MTS, SkyLink and Comstar, has recently launched a mobile operator in India.

Telenor customer base swings past 150m

  • June 23rd, 2008
  • 2:22 pm

Telenor has seen its subscriber base grow to beyond 150 million customers, 60 million of them in Asia.

Telenor has operations in the Nordic region, Eastern Europe and Asia.

“We have become one of the largest operators in mobile services in the world,” CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas was quoted by the Reuters report as saying.

“At year-end we had the position of number 7, and … we these days we are crossing 150 million ,” Baksaas said.

“We have now crossed over 60 million customers in our four operations in Asia,” he said, adding that important growth was coming particularly in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

   

 

 
 

Huawei in talks with Warid; Banglalink rejects WiMAX (Bangladesh)

  • June 6th, 2008
  • 2:51 pm

Fresh from securing a network expansion contract with GrameenPhone, Huawei has announced that it is negotiating with Warid, Bangladesh’s four largest mobile operator by subscribers, reports local newspaper The Daily Star. ‘We are in talks to sign a deal with Warid. But some time is required to complete the deal,’ said an official of Huawei. Meanwhile, in separate but related news, during his visit to Dhaka last month, Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH), said Banglalink is committed to 3G W-CDMA rather than WiMAX. ‘We will stick to 3G. Because, we believe, it is the continuation of GSM. It’s much easier for us to upgrade our technology by adopting 3G rather than WiMAX,’ he said.

   

 

 

 

 

SingTel said to considering China Telecom investment (Singapore)

  • June 5th, 2008
  • 3:13 pm

The Wall Street Journal reports that Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) is considering investing in China Telecom Corp, the world’s largest fixed line operator by lines in service. However, citing unnamed sources the report states that formal talks have yet to begin. SingTel, 55-owned by Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings, holds stakes in mobile phone operators in India, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It also owns Optus in Australia.

   

 

 

Huawei wins in Bangladesh

  • June 4th, 2008
  • 3:11 pm

GrameenPhone, the largest cellular operator in Bangladesh in terms of subscribers, has awarded a network expansion contract to Chinese equipment vendor Huawei Technologies. Though the firms did not disclose the value of the deal, a report from Reuters cites company sources who say the contract is worth in excess of USD500 million over three years. ‘The contract reflects Huawei’s leading position as a network infrastructure supplier and is expected to help GrameenPhone meet growing capacity requirements,’ the companies said in a joint statement on Wednesday. GrameenPhone claimed 17.8 million subscribers and a 47% share of the Bangladesh mobile market at the end of March 2008.

   

 

NTT DoCoMo to fight Vodafone for AKTEL stake?

  • May 16th, 2008
  • 2:26 pm

Japanese cellco NTT DoCoMo has placed an offer for a 30% stake in GSM operator Telecom Malaysia International Bangladesh (AKTEL) currently owned by Bangladeshi conglomerate AK Khan & Co, reports local newspaper the Daily Star. The stake, valued at around USD300 million, has also been targeted by UK-based Vodafone Group, which has previously sent representatives to negotiate with AK Khan & Co. ‘It is true that we have tendered a bid for the AKTEL stake,’ an official of NTT DoCoMo confirmed to the Star, whilst an AKTEL official told the paper, ‘We are still in the dark about our new partner. But something is going on. NTT DoCoMo is on the priority list.’ AKTEL is 70%-owned by Telekom Malaysia, and is currently in third place in Bangladesh’s mobile market. According to regulator the BTRC, the Malaysian-owned firm’s subscriber base rose by 90,000 in the first three months of 2008 to 7.45 million users, but it fell behind Orascom Telecom subsidiary Banglalink’s customer base, which grew by 430,000 to 8.31 million in the same period.

   

 

 

 

 

 

Warid tables USD250 million expansion plan

  • May 12th, 2008
  • 2:57 pm

Bangladeshi cellco Warid Telecom has revealed a plan to invest around USD250 million over the next twelve months to expand its GSM network coverage. The Abu Dhabi Group subsidiary launched commercial GSM/GPRS/EDGE services in May 2007 over a network covering 28 out of the country’s 64 districts, which it has since expanded to 61. Before launch, Warid earmarked initial network investment of USD300 million, with the aim of signing up six million users by mid-2009. At the end of March 2008 it had 2.79 million subscribers, putting it in fourth place in a market of six operators. However, volume of customers is not the company’s chief concern, according to CEO Muneer Farooqui, who said ‘We haven’t reached the optimum level in terms of subscriber acquisition…Our strategy is to go ahead with best quality network. So, we have no intention to have a huge number of subscribers if we fail to provide them best services.’ Farooqui added that the current tax on SIM cards – currently BDT800 (USD11.80) – introduced in 2004, was slowing the expansion of mobile services into rural areas, to a ‘tremendous’ extent.

   

 

 

GrameenPhone’s subscribers reach 18 million, hopes for mid-year listing

  • May 2nd, 2008
  • 2:53 pm

In the first quarter of this year GrameenPhone’s GSM subscriber base grew from 16.5 million to 17.8 million, and has since passed the 18 million-mark, the Bangladeshi mobile market leader’s CEO Anders Jensen told a press conference this week. The cellco’s revenues in January-March 2008 grew to BDT14.9 billion (USD222 million) from BDT14.3 billion in the previous three months, while CAPEX of BDT5.6 billion during the first quarter took its cumulative total investments to BDT117.4 billion, including a record annual CAPEX of BDT35.8 billion last year. The investment has enabled GrameenPhone to boast the most comprehensive network coverage in the country, with more than 98% of the population under its footprint, via more than 10,600 base stations in over 6,100 locations, said Jensen. The CEO also announced that GrameenPhone may list on the domestic stock market ‘by the third quarter of this year’, pending a shareholders’ decision. GrameenPhone is owned by Telenor (62%) and Grameen Telecom (38%, itself wholly owned by Grameen Bank of Bangladesh). The company previously scheduled an IPO to float less than 10% of its shares on the Dhaka Stock Exchange by June 2008.

   

 

Bangladesh nears 40 million mobile users in March

  • April 17th, 2008
  • 2:52 pm

According to new data from the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the country’s mobile operators added 1.38 million new subscribers in March 2008 to raise the total user base to 38.93 million. The figures show that market leading Telenor subsidiary GrameenPhone’s subscriber base increased by 610,000 in March to reach 17.81 million; Orascom Telecom’s Banglalink’s customer base grew by 430,000 to 8.31 million; Telecom Malaysia International Bangladesh (AKTEL) signed up 90,000 users to take its total to 7.45 million (after slipping behind Banglalink in the first two months of the year); Warid Telecom Bangladesh (which launched in May 2007) has already firmly established itself in fourth place with 2.79 million subscribers at the end of March, up from 2.6 million in February; SingTel-backed CityCell (the only CDMA operator in a GSM-dominated field) added 50,000 users to end the month with 1.56 million; and finally state-owned Teletalk was reported to have 1.01 million customers, compared to a million the month before. The latest growth figures bring the impoverished country’s cellular penetration rate to an estimated 27%.

   

 

SingTel’s mobile base hits 172 mln, boosted by Warid Telecom (Singapore)

  • February 5th, 2008
  • 2:00 pm

Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) has seen its combined mobile subscriber base reach 171.54 million at the end of last year. Its mobile subscriber base in the eight markets (Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) went up by 53 percent from 112.28 million customers a year ago, boosted by the addition of Warid Telecom’s 13.21 million subscribers in Pakistan. India’s Bharti saw its subscriber base go up to 55.16 million, adding 6.29 million new subscribers in the last quarter. Telkomsel (Indonesia) has the second largest number of mobile subscribers among the associates, it added 3.43 million subscribers to bring its total mobile subscriber base to 47.89 million. AIS (Thailand), Globe Telecom (the Philippines), PBTL (Bangladesh) and Warid Telecom also posted healthy subscriber growth of between 4.4 percent and 11.3 percent during the quarter. In its home market, Singapore, SingTel ended 200 with a mobile subscriber base of 2.33 million after adding 197,000 new customers. SingTel saw its highest quarterly jump in 3G subscribers, growing to 749,000, an increase of 120,000 customers from a quarter ago. 3G subscribers now make up more than half (56%) of SingTel’s postpaid mobile subscriber base. Optus (Australia) exceeded the 7-million mark, adding 108,000 new mobile subscribers. The number of 3G subscribers with Optus increased to 1.16 million, up 288,000 subscribers or 33 percent from a quarter ago.