Will face major crisis in weeks if BTRC doesn’t allow new SIMs: GP CEO

Grameenphone CEO Yasir Azman today said that the mobile network operator is going to face a major crisis within the next couple of weeks if BTRC does not allow the company to sell any new SIM cards or resell the numbers that have been blocked for 15 months.

“We will be able to sell the numbers, which are existing in the company, in the market for one or two weeks,” Azman said while talking to reporters at his office.

There are demands for 50,000 SIMs in the market every day, said the CEO of the country’s leading mobile operator.

“BTRC allocated us 0130 and 0131 number series, each with 1 crore slots, after we exhausted a total of 10 crore slots of 017 series. But we have already sold the allocated numbers of the 0130 and 0131 codes. There are no new SIMs in the company,” he said.

GP has already sent a letter to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission seeking permission to sell new SIMs and resell the old ones but they did not get any response from the telecom regulator in this regard.

“There are 30 lakh SIMs, which can be resold, if BTRC allows us to do so,” he said.    

However, as of December last year, the mobile operator’s active customer number stands at 7.64 crore.