As the political and social rebuilding of Afghanistan proceeds following years of war and civil unrest, the country has started putting a new national telecommunications infrastructure in place. The 2001 war destroyed a telecommunications network already suffering serious disrepair due to neglect by the Taliban. The nation's network of telephone lines was left barely functioning. With telecommunications set to play a crucial role in rebuilding the country's shattered economy and society, a properly functioning basic telephone network was always a priority. An important step was the creation of the Ministry of Communications (MoC) by the Transitional Government in early 2002. The challenge has been to attract and manage foreign investment in the country. There have been some positive signs in this regard.
In 2003, the second GSM mobile service in the country was launched, while another two mobile licences were issued in September 2005. By end-2005, the mobile subscriber base had reached about one million. In the meantime, the government, in a push to develop the fixed-line network, launched what it called the Local Fixed Service Provider (LFSP) program. This program was expected to see hundreds of small-scale investors set up companies at the village or provincial level using Wireless Local Loop (WLL) technology.
Bangladesh ranks among the most densely populated countries on the globe, but its fixed-line teledensity remains the lowest in South Asia. With teledensity at less than 1%, only a relatively small proportion of the population had access to any telecom facility. Almost 99% of homes lacked a telephone and there was a four year waiting list for fixed-line services. The overall situation has been improved to some extent by a rapidly expanding mobile market. But after a number of years of strong growth, mobile penetration was still only a little over 5% at end-2005.
The establishment in 2001 of a new regulator, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), signalled the start of a new push to reshape the country's telecom sector. The government can be expected to continue to vigorously pursue the de-regulation process. Expanding the national telecom infrastructure remains a priority. A critical factor is that Bangladesh has some of the most underdeveloped telecommunications infrastructure in the world. Given its 150 million population, the country has limited capacity to support telecom services on any scale. About 80% of the telephone lines are in Bangladesh's four main cities, while 80% of the population lives in some 86,000 rural villages. By end-2005, Bangladesh had close to one million fixed-line telephones, mostly provided by the state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) and just over 7.5 million mobile phone subscribers with service provided by six private operators.
