DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh’s 160 million people will jump into a Internet epoch in Oct when high-speed mobile phone services are launched in a nation’s dual biggest cities.
The republic already has 107 million mobile phone users though internet services loiter distant behind, with hardly 36,000 subscribers by possibly mobile or bound lines.
Top Bangladeshi mobile phone user Grameenphone pronounced on Monday it will hurl out a third-generation mobile network in tools of a collateral Dhaka and pier city Chittagong in October, reaching 7 other cities by a finish of a year.
Grameenphone, that is infancy owned by Norway’s Telenor, won 10 megahertz of 3G spectrum during a much-awaited auction on Sunday, profitable $210 million.
“This outlines a commencement of a new section in a story of Grameenphone and Bangladesh. The republic is removing prepared for a information centric era, and a goal is to assistance a republic pierce forward by providing internet for all,” Vivek Sood, arch executive of Grameenphone, pronounced in a statement.
The company, that leads a mobile marketplace with a 44 percent share, affianced to do a best to make 3G widely accessible by “affordable” packages.
Around 47 million Bangladeshis live in poverty, according to a World Bank news expelled in June, nonetheless this series has depressed neatly over a final decade.
The Bank’s clarification of misery was an income of reduction than $2 a day, or a calorie intake of reduction than 2100 calories.
Egyptian Orascom Telecom’s Banglalink, Robi, a corner try between Malaysia’s Axiata Group and Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, and Airtel, infancy owned by India’s Bharti Airtel, won bids for 5 megahertz of spectrum any during a cost of $105 million.
State-owned mobile user Teletalk final year launched a 3G use on a exam basis.
(Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Toby Chopra)