CityCell eyes the big player role through expansion
 

CityCell, the pioneer in mobile telephony in Bangladesh, is expecting a big boost in its expansion of operation and subscribers' base soon with an injection of about 150 million dollars of foreign investment in the company.
After a transition period, the cell phone operator is eyeing the key market operator role after signing deal with SingTel, Singapore's top operator.

The company is doing good business and offering its subscribers new value added services side by side with its existing facilities, said Intekhab Mahmud, Senor Vice President-Marketing of the Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Limited the owning company of CityCell during an exclusive interview with the DeshiMobile.com and Bangladeshinfo.com at its Pacific Centre office in the city's Mohakhali area on May 24.

Right now CityCell has a little less than half a million subscribers' base and the company is eying to expand it to 2.7 million mark by end of the next year. The expansion move will start at the end of this year with a whisker by offering subscribers many new value added services like voice clarity, quality data transfer facilities and e-video services for making mobile telephony an excited part of the day-to-day life in the post-modern era of tech-savvy world for the young generation.

As part of its expansion drive the cell phone operator will come up with some new packages in June this year and keep up its marketing drive to boost business, said the top marketing maestro of the company.

Intekhab Mahmud said at present CityCell is offering the lowest call charge among the four private mobile telecom operators and with the recent 1 second pulse offer subscribers can substantially cut their expenditure on mobile telephony. So right now the company has no plan to cut its call charges further.
Answering a question about the much-hyped and newly launched state-owned mobile company -"TeleTalk", he said it will pose no threat to the expansion of CityCell's subscribers' base and business as the new company itself is suffering from a series of setbacks and has not much potentials in the competitive market era with its present standing.

Moreover the company is facing a crisis over its legal entity as a case has been filed over its legal existence and till the matter is settled by court the company may not attain the much needed inter-connectivity accord with other cell phone operators. TeleTalk will have to strike accord with each individual operators for its inter-connectivity to run its network smoothly which would be a tough task for the state-owned firm.

Answering another related question, Intikhab Mahmud said at present some operators are adding even 2 lakh fresh subscribers to their base mark a month, so the online application of five lakh subscribers seeking TeleTalk connections is nothing threatening considering the huge future growth prospect of the sector.
About the overall growth of the mobile telephone sector, he said the country's subscriber base of five million would grow up to 22 million by 2008 and after that there would be a slump or stagnation in the market's growth and at that period the operators will face the real challenge of competitiveness.

Answering another question regarding the role of the mobile operators' organization - Association of Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (ATOB), Intikhab said, the operators usually discuss problems and prospects of the sector from fixing of tariffs and inter-connectivity to revenue sharing with members of the association there. But ultimate price fixing and inter-connectivity related issues entirely depend on the individual operator and the association actually play a catalyst's role.
In latest development CityCell has signed a deal with SingTel On June 2 and SingTel has acquired 45 per cent shares of PBTL through investing US$ 118 million. As per an agreement signed between the two companies, the shares of SignTel in PBTL would raise to 60 per cent by the year 2007 through an additional investment of US$ 65 million.