Vietnam's Veittel to Buy Stake in Bangladesh's Teletalk

­Vietnamese telecoms operator, Veittel is reported to be about to buy a stake in Bangladesh based Teletalk and invest around US$250 million on upgrading the mobile network.

The telecommunications minister, Raziuddin Razu told BDNews24 that the offer will be made next week. Viettel will become a partner of Teletalk contrary to rumours that Teletalk will be sold out, he said at a news conference.

The Vietnamese mobile-phone company will set up 19,500 BTS, bring 350,000 customers under the network, set up 50,000-kilometre fibre cables, use 3G technology, the minister added.

Teletalk is the smallest of the country's six mobile networks. Statistics from the Mobile World notes that the operator ended Q1 '09 with just under a million customers.

The country's operators are split into three groups, with a dominant operator, Grameenphone (21.2m) followed by two networks, Banglalink (10.8m) and Aktel (9.4m) - then the smaller clutch of Warid Telecom (2.26m), CityCell (2m) and finally, Teletalk (1m).

On the web: BDNews24 - Mobile World

Posted to the site on 2nd October 2009