Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd., d.b.a. Banglalink (Bengali: বললক; formerly Sheba Telecom (Pvt.) Ltd.) is a Bangladeshi telecommunications company headquartered in Dhaka. It's the third-largest mobile network operator in Bangladesh. This is the subsidiary company of VEON group.
Banglalink attained 1 million subscribers by December 2005, and 3 million subscribers by October 2006. In less than two years, by December 2007, Banglalink overtook Aktel (now Robi) to become the second-largest operator in Bangladesh with more than 7.1 million customers.
Banglalink had 1.03 million connections until December 2005. The number of Banglalink users increased by 257%[4] and stood at 3.64 million at the end of 2006, making it the fastest-growing operator in the world of that year. In August 2006, Banglalink became the first company to provide free incoming calls from BTTB for both postpaid and prepaid connections. On 20 August 2008, Banglalink got past the landmark of a 10 million subscriber base.[5] As of August 2021, Banglalink has a subscriber base of 36.90 million.
In July 2004, an Egypt based company,Orascom Telecom purchased Sheba Telecom and formed Banglalink brand, as sheba telecom failed to tap the business potentials in Bangladesh mainly due to a chronic feud between its Malaysian and Bangladeshi partners.[8] The purchasing value was US$60 million, of which US$50 million for share value and US$10 million was for financial debt. [9]
In September 2004, Orascom Telecom Holdings purchased 100% of the shares of Sheba Telecom (Pvt.) Limited. It was acquired for US$60 million. Sheba had a base of 59,000 users, of whom 49,000 were regular when it was sold.[10] Afterward it was re-branded and launched its services under the "Banglalink" brand on 10 February 2005.
'19' & '140' are the access codes for Banglalink as allocated by the Government of Bangladesh. Omitting +880 will require using 0 in place of it instead to represent local call, hence 019 & 0140 are the general access codes. N1N2N3N4N5N6N7N8 is the subscriber number.
Currently, there are three postpaid plans from Banglalink for its tail customers. These packages are known as Enterprise Personal, which is a subset of much larger Banglalink enterprise. All packages come with T&T local, nationwide dialing, ISD, and e-ISD connectivity.
In October 2007, BTRC fined Banglalink BDT 1.25 billion for its involvement in illegal VoIP or call termination business. The then BTRC chairman, major general (retd.) Manzurul Alam, confirmed Banglalink's involvement in the illegal trade. In a statement issued by Banglalink, the company agreed to make a one-time fixed payment of Tk. 1.25 billion to the government as compensation for its loss in revenues.[17]
Fueled with the strong core values such as Customer-Obsessed, Entrepreneurial, Innovative, Collaborative and Truthful, Banglalink is now working relentlessly to bring digital world to each and every customer to build a true digital Bangladesh, moving away from the traditional mobile operator to a tech company.
The growth of Banglalink over the years has been fueled with innovative products and services targeting different market segments, aggressive improvement of network quality and dedicated customer care, creating an extensive distribution reach across the country and establishing a strong brand that emotionally connected customers with Banglalink.
Banglalink placed an innovative idea and design for press for this occasion integrated with the digital media innovation. Around 54 newspaper all over the country has published their ad. Major newspapers are (ProthomAlo, Daily Star, Jugantor, KalerKantho, Bangladesh Protidin, Samakal and many more).
Banglalink is the third-largest telecom company in Bangladesh, after Grameenphone and Robi Axiata. It is owned by VEON, an Amsterdam-headquartered and Russian-owned global telecom company, through its Egyptian subsidiary Global Telecom Holding.
The innovative and improved digital services also expanded the customer base last year, said Banglalink Chief Executive Officer Erik Aas while sharing the earnings report during a press conference at the corporate office of the operator in Dhaka today.
Kaan Terzioglu, chairman of Banglalink and group CEO of VEON, said, "It is great to see VEON's consistent investment in Bangladesh yielding pronounced results. Banglalink's double-digit revenue growth for three consecutive quarters is a testament to its success in strengthening customers' trust."
He said Banglalink is on track to enhance its growth while contributing to the realisation of a Smart Bangladesh through consistent delivery of high-quality digital services to the thriving digital market in the country.
Banglalink, a leading digital communications service provider in Bangladesh has officially launched its Tourist SIM cards enabling foreign tourists staying in Bangladesh to enjoy Banglalink's Ookla certified fastest 4G network and digital services.
5 July 2022, Shenzhen, China - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile internet, has signed a cooperation agreement on 2.3 GHz spectrum with Banglalink, a leading private operator in Bangladesh.
Cem Velipasaoglu, Chief Financial Officer of Banglalink, said, "We are consistently trying to scale up our network capacity to become a future-ready digital service provider. As part of this ongoing endeavor, we are partnering with ZTE through this agreement. I am hopeful that their world-class technology solutions will be instrumental in fortifying our technological advancement further."
The parent company confirmed that it had submitted the application to the Central Bank of Bangladesh and, if approved, Veon would be able to add fintech offerings to its MyBL app, which is already being used by 7.1 million of its 42 million Banglalink subscribers.
Owned by Telecom Ventures Ltd., Banglalink is a well-known mobile operator that has served millions of Bangladeshi clients since 2005. Thanks to MyBL (My Banglalink), users can access and enjoy its services from their fingertips. To start off, it offers SMS bundles and internet packages for your texting and browsing needs. Further, its check-in system grants you an additional 25MB of data, incentivizing you to log in daily.
Present at the press conference were Monzula Morshed, Chief Human Resources and Administration Officer, Banglalink, Taimur Rahman, Chief Corporate & Regulatory Affairs Officer, Banglalink and other high officials of the organization.
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Launched in February 2005, Banglalink is one of the largest cellular service providers in Bangladesh. Sheba Telecom (Pvt.) Ltd. was granted license in 1989 to operate in the rural areas of 199 upazilas. Later it obtained nationwide 15-year GSM license in November 1996 to extend its business to provide cellular mobile services. In March 2008, Sheba Telecom (Pvt.) Limited changed its name as Orascom Telecom Bangladesh Limited, and in July 2013, following the 2011 ownership restructuring in the parent company, the company name changed for the second time to Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd.
Like other Bangladeshi mobile carriers the company operates 2G GSM services over 900 and 1800 MHz bands, and 3G on B1 (2100 MHz) after the 2013 spectrum auction. Following the finalisation of Bangladesh's February 2018 spectrum auction, Bangalink was awarded 2 5.6 MHz in the 1800 MHz band, and 2 x 5 MHz in the 2100 MHz band. Swiftly following the acquisition of its additional spectrum Bangalink launched a B3 (1800 MHz) 4G LTE service in February 2018.
Banglalink acquired an additional 4.4 MHz of 1800 MHz spectrum and 5 MHz of 2100 MHz spectrum in the March 2021 BTRC spectrum auction, increasing its total spectrum holding from 30.6 MHz to 40 MHz. Banglalink's 900 MHz spectrum remains in use for 2G services.
25 May 2017, ZTE and Banglalink officially announced the successful smooth migration of 60 million legacy users, and formal commercialization of their virtual Subscriber Data Management (vSDM) platform in Bangladesh, which marks a significant milestone in digital transformation. The virtual SDM platform possesses the largest capacity in the world, and will help VEON achieve more efficient user data management and enhance service availability.
The vSDM platform uses advanced virtualization technology to achieve hardware and software decoupling, and uses generic commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to achieve flexible and elastic on-demand deployment, saving investment and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, meeting continuous network evolution and service needs such as 5G and IoT. It uses a large-capacity multi-NE integration database solution to meet the requirements of multi-network integration and large capacity. The virtualization technology will bring faster speeds, and help users realize digital transformation as a result. 60 million Banglalink users will benefit from the virtualization of the network.
Banglalink CEO, Erik Aas said, "The implementation of the world's largest vSDM is a landmark for both the companies and Banglalink will always support to introduce new technology to become the best digital service provider in Bangladesh."
ZTE Bangladesh CEO, Vincent Liu, said: "I am honored, on behalf of ZTE, together with Banglalink, to announce the official commercialization of the SDM platform. As the strategic partner of Banglalikn, we will continue to be committed to providing the best services and solutions for Banglalink, to help Banglalink achieve continued business success."
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