Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has lifted the ban on GRAM BD’s SIM card sale on 3rd January’23, which was imposed on June’22 on the grounds of  operator’s failure to provide quality service. The operator was losing a sale of average 40,000 SIMs per day after the ban. Overall the number of subscriber fell from 84.8mn in June’22 to 80.3mn in Nov’22 and subscriber market share fell from 46.0% to 44.4% in the aforementioned period.

Steps taken by GRAM BD to improve quality of service

1.    GRAM BD bought radio frequency worth around BDT 60bn from auctions in 2021 and 2022. The spectrum they bought in 2021 has fully been implemented in networks. Since  Nov’22, They started the process of setting up new radio frequency bought in the last auction held in March 2022.

2.    The operator targeted to set up 1900 new towers in 2022 (in 2021 they set up 1600 towers). Also the matter of sharing the towers among the operators has resolved.

3.    The company plans to connect 34% of its towers with fiber optic cable within a year.

After taking these steps The 4G internet speed of GRAM BD has found to be 17 Mbps in a recent test which was only 7 Mbps previously. BTRC is satisfied by GRAM BD’s improvement in past six months and hence the regulator has lifted the ban GRAM BD on selling SIM.