Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd. is the only government telecommunication company in Bangladesh. It started its commercial operation on 31 March 2005 with skyscraping expectation. One long year has passed since Teletalk started its commercial operation. Considering the time of operation of other existing operators in this field, this period might seem to be small, but considering the first year of operation of an operator it’s pretty significant a time. Probably it’s the right times to asses the achievements it has made – compare them with what it could have achieved and also to scrutinize the opportunities and threats which are looming over.
Teletalk A Bangladeshi Mobile Operator
The most remarkable success of Teletalk is the slump in Tariff Structure. As soon as Teletalk announced its tariff the long-lasting oligopoly between other private mobile operators were shattered. Healthy competition came into the mobile I market causing almost 50%, if not more, reduction in price both in terms of SIM price and usage rate. The slump in price made mobile phone affordable even for the low-income group of people. Using a mobile phone soon became a necessity; it’s no more a luxury.
The strength of Teletalk was the confidence of the subscribers in the government institution. On the other hand, it’s being the part of government, is probably the biggest weakness from the operational perspective of Teletalk, which will be understandable as we go through this article. At a time when people were desperately searching the way out to get rid of the oligopoly of a few operators, Teletalk started its operation with big bang of response. People became frenzy to get a Teletalk SIM. Another good reason for that craze was its flexibility in connectivity with the other operators.
It’s the only SIM, which has such a, versatility of connections having ISD, Economy ISD service along with both incoming and outgoing connectivity with any of the land phones. The biggest weakness was a premature entrance in a mature market. As soon as anyone could catch hold of a Teletalk mobile, he started comparing it with the services of Grameen, Bangalink or Robi. Having the slightest of ideas of what problems can impound and compound starting a commercial operation with such a small coverage containing pockets all over the places, Teletalk had its first setback. Many of us used to say “Where is the harm in throwing a system on use with such a small number of BTSs if operator like Grameen could start its commercial operation with
Many of us used to say “Where is the harm in throwing a system on use with such a small number of BTSs if operator like Grameen could start its commercial operation with couple of BTSs around.” But “think-tanks” of Teletalk miserably failed to identify the difference of stepping into a developed market and that into a developing market. Moreover, the progress of development of network was far below the expectation of subscribers. Above all the interfacing with other operators was so poor, especially with GRAMEEN, mostly because of non-cooperation, it became a nightmare for the Teletalk subscribers to use a Teletalk mobile.
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