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Orange, SK Telecom, Etisalat eye investment

Company reps in Dhaka this week for talks

Md Hasan
Delegates of three big telecoms companies-- UK-based Orange Telecom, South Korean SKTelecom and UAE's Etisalat -- start meeting telecoms regulator tomorrow to investigate investment opportunities in Bangladesh.
High officials of the three companies will meet Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) chief between tomorrow and Wednesday to explore investment potentiality in submarine cable and WiMAX technology and mobile phone as well.
The news came at the moment when the BTRC forecast that the number of mobile phone subscribers would be doubled to 7 crore by 2010 and the sector's turnover would also reach to Tk 50,000 crore by 2011.
"We have got huge responses from the world's telecoms giants. And the visit of these companies to the country means how Bangladesh has become a significant hub for telecoms," Major General (retd) Manzurul Alam, chair- man of BTRC, told reporters yesterday.
The telecoms regulator said perhaps the companies are coming to explore opportunities in WiMAX, private submarine cable and joint ventures in existing mobile operators.
"We will introduce a service for telecoms investors under which maximum procedures will be completed by the BTRC so that investors can decide to invest here sitting in one office," Alam said.
BTRC has taken up initiatives to bring back discipline in the telecoms sector.
The BTRC is working hard to introduce the latest technologies like WiMAX and third generation mobile phone, Alam said.
- India's Reliance, Tata and Singapore-based Singtel also visited Bangladesh and basically investigated the potentiality to participate in the bidding process of private submarine cable.
BTRC said some 65 companies including 15 foreign ones already showed their interest to participate in the submarine cable bidding.
Orange could show interest in introducing Wimax technology in Bangladesh, BTRC officials said. WiMAX is a wireless digital communications system, that is intended for wireless "metropolitan area networks". WiMAX can provide broadband wireless access up to 30 miles (50 km) for fixed stations, and 3 to 10 miles (5-15 km) for mobile stations.
SK Telecom already showed interest to buy stakes in the state-run Teletalk, BTRC officials said but failed to confirm Etisalat's intention.
Bangladesh's telecoms sector has been growing since 1991 after introducing mobile telecommunications. With having telecoms penetration rate of 29 percent, at present, the country has 38million mobile and 11 million land phone customers.
The revenue from the telecoms sector also increased to Tkl345crore till yesterday, which was Tk500crore in the last fiscal year. The telecom regulator said this year revenue basically increased mainly because of getting compensation of Tk631 crore from different mobile and fixed line operators for their illefgal involvement in international call termination through using VoIP technology'.
However, the regulator hope the average revenue from telecoms sector will be Tk 1500crore a year.
hasan@thedailystar.net