Banglalink will make significant investments to transform itself from a traditional telecom operator to a digital one as a part of its effort to adapt to the changing nature of the industry.
"There is a transition in the industry and the traditional telecom company will not be able to live long," said Kaan Terzioğlu, group chief executive officer (CEO) of Banglalink's parent company Veon, in an interview recently.
He said a traditional operator sells a number of minutes, data and SMS. On the other hand, digital operators' services are to support customers' lifestyle -- TV service, music, news, cloud, financing, healthcare and many more.
"You will see us not focusing on traditional voice and data, we will not sell raw data in future, you will see us providing a bundle of digital applications, that's the area of our future investment," he said.
Banglalink has already launched digital entertainment platform Toffee, where customers can watch many television channels and entertainment content. Becoming available at end of 2019, the platform has already garnered 8 million customers.
During his recent visit to Bangladesh, Terzioğlu launched Health Hub, the country's first integrated digital health platform, partnering with healthcare providers Daktarbhai, DocTime and Pulse as a part of the company's vision to diversify its operation more into the digital space.
He said once Banglalink completes its investment in 4G, which remains its top priority for now, it would invest in digital services and applications ranging from entertainment to healthcare and education to financial services.
"Some of them we will do ourselves, some of them we will do on a partnership basis," he said.
The regulator has to understand that traditional telecom services will not survive very long and allow mobile operators to provide services to the customer based on what customers expect and demand, he said.
He said in many countries, mobile operators were leading mobile financial services from the front and something similar could be done in Bangladesh.
This device is the bank, Terzioğlu said while taking a cellphone in hand, adding that it needs to transform as a significant cost saver.
Asked about the upcoming spectrum auction which prioritised the launch of 5G, he said the upcoming auction was important and he was very glad that Bangladesh was finally making an abundant amount of spectrum available at reasonable prices.
"We do have a strategic plan in terms of rolling out our networks and we do have a plan on how to deploy spectrum in this network," said the group CEO.
"We will continue on our strategic plan as we are committed to the market. We are also committed to continuing to be the fastest network in the country," he said.
Asked if Bangladesh is a friendly country for foreign investment, Terzioğlu said Bangladesh was taking solid steps in the right direction.
"I think we will see further liberalisation in the years to come," he said, adding that the government was considering all the options for making the country an attractive option for investors.
About the high tax in the telecom industry, he said the taxation burden on the telecom industry in Bangladesh was the biggest in the world.
"If Bangladesh can lower the tax burden in the industry, as it is yet to penetrate to everyone, it will help Bangladesh reach digital services to everyone," he said.
"It will only happen by the lowering of indirect taxation," he said.
Asked about optical fibre deployment practices in other markets, he said different regulators have different approaches.
"But we wish we had more flexibility in deploying fibre and sharing fibre in Bangladesh as an operator. Fibre investment requires quite a lot of capital expenditures and the more it is shared among the operators, the better it is for the industry," he said.
Asked about customers' dissatisfaction with the operators' service quality, he said speed and quality of the network would be improved by making spectrum more available for 4G sharing network among the four existing operators.
About containing monopoly in the market, he said any operator with more than 40 per cent market share needs to be regulated in a way that they respect fair competition, and the actions of one operator should not be at the expense of the consumers.
He said it has been two years since Covid-19 surfaced and Veon continued making investments in Bangladesh during this period and half of its 37 million customers now use 4G.
"We have decided to double down on our investment. We will become a national operator as there are parts of the country where we are not operating due to a lack of infrastructure," he said.
According to him, Banglalink has started work on deploying 7,000 network sites.
"You will see we will increase our network coverage. We will continue to be a high-quality 4G service provider the covers all geographies in Bangladesh," he said.
"For us, bringing 4G to all, not 5G for a few, is number one priority," he added.
Terzioğlu said he was not a big fan of the vanity of 5G.
"It sounds good but the reality is that still less than 50 per cent of people have a smartphone and less than 50 per cent enjoy 4G. That means for the next 2-3 years we have to continue on our mission to bring 4G to everyone," he said.
Terzioğlu went on to say that they would invest in 5G when it was necessary only for industrial purposes, not the consumers.
About the profitability, he said they were a long-term investor and invested about $4 billion in the last 17 years of operations.
"We will continue investing every single year with about $200 million to $300 million in the next three years. We are patient, we haven't taken dividends out of Bangladesh yet. Hope we will share our profit with local investors," he said.
Terzioğlu said Banglalink has aspirations to get listed in the stock market in three years.
Mentioning that Banglalink was the best in the assessment of an independent agency and the regulator, he said he was very proud of the work of the team who were deploying the networks and increasing customer satisfaction.
Branding Bangladesh as a beacon of stability in the region, he said he visited Bangladesh two years ago, just before Covid-19 emerged, and the pandemic had not been able to dampen the country's economic progress.
"The number of retail stores is getting higher and higher and quality has improved, high-end fashion stores almost doubled in two years, which was almost a sleeping period for many countries," he added.