Bangladesh mobile phone users drop in September

DHAKA (Reuters) - The number of mobile phone users in Bangladesh dropped by 310,000 in September to 45.09 million for the first time as all three top companies lost their subscribers, regulator's data showed.

Subscriber of Grameenphone, mostly controlled by Norway's Telenor, fell to 20.82 million in September from 20.84 million in August, said the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.

Egyptian Orascom Telecom's Banglalink saw its user number drop to 10.14 million from 10.17 million while Aktel, 70 percent owned by Telekom Malaysia and the rest bought by Japan's NTT DoCoMo last month, ended September with 7.63 million users from 8.14 million in August.

However, industry insiders said the market was still growing. The number of subscribers has fallen as operators cut off unregistered SIM cards after the government introduced new regulations requiring personal details to be recorded for security concerns.

The industry regulator ordered mobile operators in August 2007 to re-register customers who bought connections before February 28, 2006. The deadline ended May 31.

For years operators in the South Asian country have been allowed to sell the cards without asking to see identification and registering the purchaser's personal details.

Gulf-based Warid Telecom raised its user base to 3.86 million users in September from 3.68 million while the only CDMA carrier CityCell, 45 percent owned by Singapore Telecommunication, and state-owned Teletalk also saw their user bases to rise.

The number of mobile phone users rose nearly 58 percent in 2007 to 34.4 million, the telecoms watchdog said, helped by competitive tariffs, cheap handsets and moderate economic growth.

Mobile phone services have emerged as an important contributor to the cash-strapped nation's economy.