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Introduction:

In the 21st century Bangladesh has a well established telecommunication industry. Maximum part of the Bangladesh is now connected by telecommunication facilities. There is both land and mobile telephony system is available. Most of the town area of districts is connected by land phone and in present time the remote places are also connected by the mobile telephony systems.

In 1996, Bangladesh was preparing to auction off private cell phone licenses to four companies. So at the behest of Dr. Muhammad Yunus (Grameen Bank’s founder) but completely independent of Grameen Bank, a not-for-profit private company called Grameen Telecom was created. Grameen Telecom, in turn, created a for-profit company called GrameenPhone, found a foreign partner, and put in a bid; GrameenPhone received one of the four licenses on November 28, 1996 which was offered by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of Bangladesh.

Grameenphone is now the leading telecommunications service provider in the country with more than 20 million subscribers as of June 2008. Presently, there are about 30 million telephone users in the country, of which, a little over one million are fixed-phone user and the rest mobile phone subscribers. Starting its operations on March 26, 1997, the Independence Day of Bangladesh, Grameenphone has come a long way. It is a joint venture enterprise between Telenor (62%), the largest telecommunications service provider in Norway with mobile phone operations in 12 other countries, and Grameen Telecom Corporation (38%), a non-profit sister concern of the internationally acclaimed micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank. Over the years, Grameenphone has always been a pioneer in introducing new products and services in the local market. GP was the first company to introduce GSM technology in Bangladesh when it launched its services in March 1997. The technological know-how and managerial expertise of Telenor has been instrumental in setting up such an...