Grameenphone inks new radio equipment deal with NEC

Grameenphone, a leading telecom service provider in Bangladesh, has awarded Japan’s NEC with a new radio equipment contract to expand and modernize Grameenphone’s existing network in Bangladesh.
Grameenphone mobile coverage
NEC, one of the leading telecom network makers in the world, did not reveal the financial details of the radio equipment contract. NEC is a long-time partner of Grameenphone, the #1 mobile operator in Bangladesh.

The second quarter Capex of Grameenphone was BDT 5.2 billion, mainly focused towards 4G network and coverage expansion along with spectrum deployment. The number of 4G users of Grameenphone stood at 23.8 million at the end of the second quarter.

Opex of Grameenphone for the quarter stood at BDT 11.2 billion with 9 percent growth, mainly driven by higher regulatory and sales & marketing costs.

Grameenphone, a part of the Telenor Group, reported 8.1 percent increase in revenues to BDT 35.8 billion for the second quarter. 8.5 percent growth in subscription & traffic revenue was driven by growth in bundle, data and voice revenue.

Grameenphone acquired 1.3 million new subscribers during the quarter, ending the first half of 2021 with 82.0 million total subscribers, a growth of 10.1 percent from the same period last year. Data users grew by 7.0 percent reaching 43.7 million. 53.3 percent of total subscribers are now using internet services, Grameenphone said earlier.

NEC announced that Grameenphone will deploy some of the latest network technologies to ensure a seamless communications experience for more than 82 million Grameenphone subscribers.

NEC will be offering higher modulation (4096QAM), channel aggregation (CA), multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems and traffic aggregation functions across various layers and frequency bands (microwave and millimeter bands) to Grameenphone.

These technologies will help Grameenphone to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and to provide more reliable networks with higher transmission capacity.

“Utilizing our network domain expertise, we aim to capitalize on the performance of NEC’s equipment in order to enhance the transmission capacity of Grameenphone’s networks,” said Yukio Hioki, General Manager, Wireless Solution Division, NEC Corporation.