Bangladesh's mobile phone sector witnessed a 180 percent growth from January 2005 till now, with the number of users rising to 10.8 million from 3.85 million in 13 months, official news agency BSS reported Thursday.

The GrameenPhone, the biggest cell phone operator in Bangladesh, which had a subscriber base of 2.4 million in December 2004, more than doubled the number to six million covering 60 percent of the market, Shawkat Imam Syed, information managing director of the company was quoted as saying.

The AKTEL maintained its second position by raising its subscriber base to 2.6 million from only 1.1 million during the year of 2005.

AKTEL sources said that it had a target of reaching three million subscriber-base within 2005 but it remained behind the target for the new competitors in the market.

Sheba Telecom, which was taken over by Egyptian company Orascom a year ago, managed to take the third position from fourth, by aggressively marketing its service in a new brand name, Banglalink.

The Banglalink began with a subscriber base of only 30,000 and raised the number to 1.5 million in the current month, a Banglalink official said.

The Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd., operator of the CityCell, remained behind in the race and was placed in fourth position by rising the subscriber base from 350,000 to 500,000 in a year.

The smallest operator so far is the state-run Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd., which after launching its service in March managed to create a subscriber base of 200,000.

The Warid Telecom of the United Arab Emirates is going to launch its service in Bangladesh as the sixth mobile phone company soon.

Officials in the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission said it would make the market more competitive and facilitate further reduction in the call charges and improvement in services.

Officials of the mobile phone companies predicted that the market would be doubled reaching around 20 million next year.

Source: Xinhua