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