GP allowed to sell 78,000 SIMs 

The telecom regulator has allowed Grameenphone to sell 78,000 SIMs to the army, police, and other government and corporate customers, more than four and a half months after the operator was ordered to stop selling new connections.

"The ministry has directed us to allow Grameenphone to sell the SIMs," Shyam Sunder Sikder, chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), told The Daily Star, referring to the Posts and Telecommunications Division.

On June 30, the BTRC asked GP to stop selling new SIM cards for its "failure to provide quality services".

However, in mid-September, GP was given a go-ahead to sell unused old numbers approved before the SIM sales ban was put in place. But the telecom watchdog backtracked from its decision on November 6 and slapped a restriction on the sales of all types of connections.

Although the prohibition was imposed on the grounds of call drops and low service quality, the network provider had earlier passed in the regulator's tests in this regard.