Connecting Bangladesh

(Posted June 2022) Mobile phone users are ubiquitous in Bangladesh. The country of nearly 165 million boasted of 180 million mobile subscribers in April 2022, with many people having more than one account. This is a remarkable state of affairs considering the poor level of connectivity that prevailed in the country at the dawn of the millennium.

Huawei is proud to have played a key role in the development of Bangladeshi mobile networks.

Huawei began doing business in Bangladesh in 1998. From the start, Huawei’s focus has been to localize operations. Currently, about 85% of Huawei staff in Bangladesh is local. 

In the early 2000s, few people had a mobile phone in Bangladesh, largely because coverage was poor to inexistent outside the main cities. In 2006, Huawei took on a contract that involved networking remote mountain villages. The timeline was demanding. The first part of the project required setting up base stations at 100 sites, which was more than triple the normal rate of deployment. To reach some of the villages not linked by roads, Huawei team members used oxcarts, rickshaws, and sometimes even just their hands and feet to move the network equipment. Despite the hardships, the project turned out to be hugely successful.

Today, like elsewhere, the country has comprehensive 4G coverage. Bangladeshis have gotten used to making video calls with friends and relatives worldwide, order food online, and manage their finances with internet banking.

And Huawei continues to contribute to the development of telecommunications in Bangladesh. In December 2021, the country’s first 5G network became operational in Dhaka. Huawei and local network operator Teletalk worked together to make this launch a reality.

See how Huawei and Bangladesh have progressed together over the past 20 years: