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Bangladesh has world's lowest teledensity: ITU

sTAR REPORT
Bangladesh's teledensity is one of the lowest in South Asia as well as in the world, according to statistics of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Only 0.63 of 100 people enjoyed the communication facility, the latest statistics presented at a seminar yesterday marking World Telecommunication Day 2003 showed.
The 2002 data placed Bangladesh at slot number 21st from the bottom on the list of 196 ITU member states with 0.51
teledensity, way down from the Maldives with 10.27, Sri Lanka with 4.66 and India with 3.98. Then the figures for Bhutan were 2.84, Pakistan 2.48, Nepal 1.41 and Myanmar 0.61.
Bangladesh remained only ahead of war-raged Afghanistan in the Asian region.
Globally, the US topped the list with 65.89 and United Kingdom with 58.74, Japan with 58.58, Korea with 48.86, Malaysia with 19.79 and China with 16.69 were other world leaders.
Currently Bangladesh has
9,20,000 fixed telephone lines of which 8,95,000 have been installed by the state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) and 25,000 by Sheba and the Bangladesh Rural Telecom Authority (BRTA). The number of cellular phones provided by four operators in foreign joint ventures stands at 12,64,000.
BTTB has 7,70,000 lines in urban areas where Dhaka alone has 4,56,000 lines.
The teledensity remained poor as the government allocated only a
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small fraction of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in telecommunications, Fazlur Rahman, former chairman of the BTTB and an official of the Association of Telecom Operators in Bangladesh (ATOB), told the seminar.
The spending pales in comparison with that of other SAARC countries, he added.
The government allocated around Tk 1,800 crore for the telecom sector in the 2002-03 fiscal while it had earned around Tk 1,580 crore from BTTB alone in the 2001-02 fiscal.
The BTTB, which went completely digital in urban area last month, still has 37.5 per cent analogue telephones in rural areas.
In Internet use, Bangladesh's position in South Asia was 2nd with 1.53 Internet user per 1,000 people against 0.21 by Myanmar, the lowest in the region.
The Maldives again topped the list with 53.76, followed by India with 15.91, Bhutan with 14.46, Sri Lanka with 10.56, Pakistan with 3.45 and Nepal with 2.64.