The country's mobile subscriber base increased by almost 15 per cent last year while that of internet climbed by more than 20 per cent, the government has said.
The number of mobile subscribers in the country reached 145.114 million at the end of 2017, up from 126.391 million a year earlier, according to the latest figures of state-run Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.
The number of internet subscribers, meanwhile, increased from 66.623 million to 80.483 million at the same period.
This means the country added 18.723 million mobile subscribers back in 2017, while internet subscription-base was enlarged by 13.86 million.
Although Grameenphone has maintained its market lead among the mobile operators by a large margin, the biggest jump in terms of subscribers came from Robi which, insiders say, has benefitted from a boosted network infrastructure following its merger with Airtel.
Robi and Airtel started the year with a combined subscriber base of 33.831 million-out of which some 25.908 million belonged to Robi while the rest lay with Airtel.
However, by December 2017, the number of subscribers of the merged entity soared to 42.908 million, the biggest leap for any operator.
The subscriber base of market leader GP increased from 57.954 million in December 2016 to 65.327 million in December 2017.
This means around 48.45 per cent of the new subscribers in the country was generated by Robi, while 39.37 per cent came from GP.
Robi's rapid rise last year also means that it has displaced Banglalink as the second-biggest operator in terms of subscribers.
Banglalink, which started the year with 30.974 million subscribers, added a meagre 1.41 million to its tally and ended as the third-biggest operator with 32.384 million customers.
"The merger has actually boosted Robi's network extensively and helped them enhance their presence in a number of districts where they earlier had insufficient network coverage," an industry insider told FE, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Statistics show that over the last few years, Robi has also invested hugely compared to other mobile operators, which has helped their rise," he added.
When asked about the possible impact of the upcoming introduction of 4G in the country, experts noted that the arrival of 4th generation cellular technology is unlikely to have any big impact in terms of the number of subscribers.
"The number of subscribers will continue to increase in 2018 but not necessarily because of 4G", said an official of a top telecom operator.
"This is mainly because of device constraints, as majority of the people in the country still do not use smartphones."
"What would happen after the arrival of 4G is that the existing 3G users would switch to 4G. But the number of subscribers is unlikely to be effected by the arrival of 4G," he added.
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