The active mobile phone subscribers of the country decreased by 2.95 lakh in December, three months in a row, as the tight SIM registration procedure imposed by the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission continued to affect the new subscriber acquisition.
In the last three months the total number of subscribers declined by 13 lakh of the six operators.
The total number of subscribers of six operators declined to 9.72 crore at the end of December from 9.75 crore in November as out of six operators, four, including the leading Grameenphone, lost clients, according to a BTRC press release on Tuesday.
Officials of mobile companies said the total number of active subscribers had gone down in last three months as many of the users had put off multiple SIMs, closed down some of their connections while the addition of new subscribers also slowed down after the BTRC had tightened SIM registration process with effect from October 12.
The BTRC asked all mobile phone companies not to sell any pre-activated connections and only activate the SIMs after completion of registration in a bid to stop ‘criminal activities’ by using mobile phones.
After the introduction of the new system, mobile operators said the system would affect the mobile industry because of ‘tough registration process’.
The total number of subscribers fell by 8 lakh in November and 2 lakh in October.
Mobile operators said that this was the first time the total number of subscribers in the country fell for three consecutive months in last one decade.
Grameenphone lost more than 9 lakh subscribers in three months — 2.23 lakh in December, 4 lakh in November and 3 lakh in October — with its total subscribers coming down to 4.00 crore at the end of December from 4.09 crore in September.
The total number of subscribers of Banglalink stood at 2.58 crore in December by losing 3.30 lakh in a month and 10 lakh in three months.
The total number of Robi subscribers stood at 2.10 crore by losing 77 thousand users in December but increased 2 lakh in three months.
Airtel subscribers increased to 70.51 lakh by adding 1.13 lakh users in December and a total of 1.68 lakh in three months.
The subscriber-base of state-run mobile operator Teletalk increased to 16.50 lakh in December by adding 2.82 lakh users in the month which is also the total addition in three months.
Citycell’s subscribers declined to 15.36 lakh in December by losing 60 thousand users in the month and losing 1.43 lakh in three months.