Asia Pacific

Grameenphone the leading telecommunications operator of Bangladesh is part of Telenor Group which has presence in 13 markets across Europe and Asia. Before Grameenphone's inception the phone was for a selected urbanized few. The cell phone was a luxury: a flouting accessory for the select elite. The mass could not contemplate mobile telephony as being part of their lives. Grameenphone started its journey with the Village Phone program: a pioneering initiative to empower rural women of Bangladesh. The name Grameenphone translates to Rural phone. Starting its operations on March 26 1997 the Independence Day of Bangladesh Grameenphone was the first operator to introduce GSM Technology in this country. Grameenphone pioneered the then breakthrough initiative of mobile to mobile telephony and became the first operator to cover 99% of the country's people with network Since its inception Grameenphone has built the largest cellular network in the country with over 9700 base stations. Presently nearly 99 percent of the country s population is within the coverage area of the Grameenphone network. Grameenphone has always been a pioneer in introducing new products and services in the local telecom market. Grameenphone was also the first telecommunication operator in Bangladesh to introduce the pre-paid service in September 1999. It established the first 24-hour Call Center introduced value-added services such as VMS SMS fax and data transmission services international roaming service WAP SMS-based push-pull services EDGE personal ring back tone and many other products and services. In October 2013 the company launched 3G services commercially. The entire Grameenphone network is 3G/EDGE/GPRS enabled allowing access to high-speed Internet and data services from anywhere within the coverage area. There are currently over 15 million Internet users in the Grameenphone network. Today Grameenphone is the leading and largest telecommunications service provider in Bangladesh with more than 55 million subscribers as of October 2015