The New Nation - Internet Edition

BUSINESS REPORT

The growth of cell phone companies dropped in August for the first time in Bangladesh, one of the world's fastest-growing mobile markets, with operators attributing it on the current economic slowdown. The number of new subscribers in August fell by half a million compared to July according to the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC).

"Six cell phone operators managed to add 600,000 customers in August against 1.1 million in July this year,'' a senior official of BTRC, said.

He said in June the six cell phone operators, with Grameenphone being the top one, added 1.66 million customers.

The new addition, however, raised the total number of mobile phone subscribers in the country to 45.4 million in August, the official said.

The top three operators, however, maintained their usual growth with Grameenphone, holding the top position in the market with 20.84 million customers, followed by Egyptian Orascom Telecom's Banglalink 10.17 million and AKTEL majority owned by Telekom Ma laysia International, to 7.3 million from 6.4 million.

The number of customers of Citycell, the only CDMA carrier in the country, reached 1.68 million in July, which was 1.67 million in June. But the number of state-run TeleTalk subscribers was 1.07 mil lion customers in June while it fell to 0.93 million in July and 0.89 million in August.