Citycell focusing on wireless broadband to face 3G push

Mehboob Chowdhury, chief executive officer of Citycell, talks about the present situation of the mobile company and the challenges it faces in the 3G era in an interview with New Age on Saturday. Interviewed by Ahmed Shawki New Age: What is the current situation of Citycell, the only CDMA technology mobile phone operator in the country? Mehboob Chowdhury: Our situation is not bad at all. We are in the phase of reorganisation in terms of nationwide network expansion to provide clients wireless broadband services as well as to improve our voice services. At this moment, we are focusing on rural or semi-urban market to provide clients there the quality facilities available in the urban areas. NA: Do you see any threat to the existence of Citycell as all mobile operators except Citycell got 3G licences? Mehboob: Not really. You see the destination of all operators is the long-term evaluation or LTE technology. You can reach to LTE by using CDMA technology or GSM technology. All other mobile operators chose the GSM and we took a different path. That is the only difference. As long as the data communication is concerned, which the 3G is all about, Citycell picked the concept before anyone else by introducing wireless internet. As a matter of fact, I see the 3G service as a blessing in disguise. It will increase the use of internet and we are now focusing on the nationwide network expansion for wireless broadband. NA: How Citycell is designing its network expansion? Mehboob: We will build a nationwide wireless internet network to spread the internet-based facility in the rural areas. Currently we have a capacity of providing up to 11MB speed which we will increase up to 14.7 MB. We are planning to start this by March next year. The regulatory approval and investment formalities are in progress for the expansion. NA: Citycell is witnessing a continuous downward trend in subscribers’ number for the last few months. How will you explain the trend? Mehboob: It is a fact and we are very much aware of that. To be honest, we could not serve our customers to the best of our ability because of many reasons. But now we are working on that. We will ensure better customer experience in coming days. We will deliver what we promise. And off course, the recent hype surrounding the 3G also took a toll on our subscribers’ base. NA: What do you think about the change of focus of mobile phone technology from voice service to data-based service? Mehboob: That is the beauty of technology. I believe that Bangladesh is entering into a data technology era and we have to be very careful how we brand this. High speed internet has so many usages and we should focus on the productive ones. Financial inclusion using internet should be one of the best possible use of data service. (source)