Robi has planned to share infrastructure with fellow mobile phone operator Banglalink as part of its cost-cutting drive, but sees no reason to float shares, company chief executive Michael Kuehnar said.
Kuehnar who has turned around once ailing AKTel into the fastest growing mobile operator this year said his company has launched talks with Banglalink to share network infrastructure nationwide.
"So far, the response from them is positive", the Robi Chief Executive Officer told the FE during an interview last week.
He did not make comment on a possible merger between third-ranked Robi and second-placed Banglalink -- a move experts see as 'highly logical' to take the fight to runaway market leader Grameenphone.
Toegther, the two companies would have 26 million subscribers, accounting for some 45 per cent of the country's total mobile phone users. Grameenphone has 25 million subscribers.
Kuehnar said infrastructure collaboration between Robi and Banglalink is a 'major attempt" for his company to boost profit and ensure synergy for furture growth.
"The move is mainly aimed at cutting cost as our experience shows that such infrastructure sharing results in major slash in our operational expenses", he said.
In February this year, the two mobile operators tied up with Grameenphone in similar infrastructure sharing deals, which the authorities say was aimed at tapping fast growing rural market.
"The nature of the Banglalink deal will be quite similar to the infrastructure sharing tie we earlier inked with GP", he said.
He said Robi would also launch talks with other telecom infrastructure firms who operate in data and voice transfer and internet service providing business.
"In the future, we would like to go into such sharing deal with the Wimax operators and other telecom infrastructure providers", he added.
The company's latest move came just a couple of months after the company changed its brand name into Robi.
The company was known as AKTEL since it was launched a decade back. The name was derived from the country's one of the oldest industrial groups, AK Khan and Co.
But AK Khan sold its minority stake in the company to NTT DoCoMo in 2008. The majority stake holder TM International Ltd also meanwhile changed its name into Axiata.
Kuehnar said his company's new brand name has been "well-accepted" by Bangladeshi consumers, helping it become the fastest growing operator this year.
Since launching of the new name, Robi has added 0.64 million susbcribers -- faster than any of the country's five other mobile phone firms.
"The renaming was a right step from a marketing point of view", Kuehnar said, "as our survey shows that 80 per cent of the subscribers were positive with our new brand name".
Robi now has around 10.82 million subscribers till end of April this year , according to the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission.
The company's net profit after taxes stood at 857.3 million taka in 2009 on a 19.92 billion Taka revenue. It earned 5.93 billion Taka as revenue in the first quarter of 2010, Robi officials said.
According to the official figures, it has invested around Tk. 6.64 billion in enhancing networking capacity in 2009 while another Tk 647 million was invested in marketing.
Kuehnar, however, ruled out listing of the company in the country's two bourses. "At this moment we don't have any such plan," he said.
The company has invested Tk 1.31 billion in the first quarter of 2010 in networking capacity and a robust Tk 403 million in marketing alone, officials said.
"With only 33 percent penetration, Bangladesh is still an untapped market for telecom operators", said the Robi CEO.
He said a cut in government tax on new connections would boost telecom growth "tremendously".
"The government tax on SIM cards and other external costs eat up around 50 per cent of our gross revenue. The telecom operators could invest more in penetrating the market if the government reduced the tax," Kuehnar added.
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