Mobile cos lost 18 lakh subscribers in Jan amid biometric re-registration

The number of country’s active mobile phone users declined by 18 lakh in January as all private mobile operators witnessed shrinking of their subscriber’s base amid the ongoing biometric re-registration of SIMs.
According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission’s data released on Thursday, the total active mobile users of the country were 13.19 crore in January, which were 13.37 crore in the previous month.
Officials of the mobile phone companies said that as the biometric verification was going as per a government order, the use of multiple SIMs was decreasing.
‘We fear that this trend of losing customers will continue for some time. The people who bought several SIM cards perhaps are now registering one or two SIMs and the rest of his/her SIMs are becoming inactive,’ a senior official of a mobile phone company told New Age.
Usually a SIM is declared inactive, if it is not in use for 90 days in a row, he said.
‘The biometric verification started in mid November and we are feeling some heat in January,’ he said.
Leading operator Grmaeenphone’s subscriber base declined to 5.62 crore in January as the operator lost 4 lakh users in the month.
Banglalink lost 5 lakh subscribers in the month that brought down the operator’s total subscriber base to 3.23 crore.
Robi’s subscribers declined to 2.77 crore as the operator lost 6 lakh users in the month.
Airtel lost 2 lakh subscribers that brought down its subscriber base to 1.05 crore.
Citycell’s subscriber base declined to 86,700 in January as the operator lost 14,000 users in the month.
Only state-run Teletalk’s subscriber base increased in January to 42.11 lakh by adding 68,000 new users as the operator is yet to run the biometric verification at the retail level.
The internet users of the country, however, increased to 5.61 crore in January as the country added 20 lakh new users in the months. The new users were entirely mobile internet subscribers.
The mobile internet users increased to 5.34 crore in January from 5.14 crore in the previous month.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net