Robi
 | |
| Joint Venture Cellular Mobile Phone Operator | |
| Industry | Mobile Telecommunication |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Headquarters | Robi Corporate Office, 53 Gulshan South Avenue, Gulshan-1,Dhaka, Bangladesh |
Area served | All over Bangladesh (covers 99% of the total population) |
Key people |
Supun Weerasinghe CEO A K M Morshed CTO Mahtabuddin AhmedCOO Matiul Islam Nowshad CCPO Yap Wai YipCFO |
| Products | Mobile Telephony, EDGE, GSM, GPRS, international roaming |
| Revenue |
 9.4% in 2014 |
| Parent | Axiata Group Berhad (92%) and NTT DoCoMo (8%) |
| Slogan | জ্বলে উঠুন আপন শক্তিতে (Ignite the power within) |
| Website |
www |
Robi Axiata Limited, DBA Robi (Bengali: রবি), formerly known as AKTel, is a joint venture between Axiata Group Berhad, Malaysia (92%) and NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan (8%). It provides 3.5G and 2G services.
Robi is the third largest mobile phone operator in Bangladesh with 27.553 million subscribers as of February 2016.[1]
Robi boasts of the widest international roaming service in the market, connecting over 500 operators across 207 countries. It is the first operator in the country to introduce GPRS. Robi uses GSM 900/1800 MHz standard and operates 2G services on allocated 12.8 MHz frequency spectrum.[2] For 3.5G, it has 5 MHz spectrum on 2100 MHz band.
History
Robi Axiata Limited started as a joint venture company between Telekom Malaysia and AK Khan and Company. It was formerly known as Telekom Malaysia International (Bangladesh) which commenced operations in Bangladesh in 1997 with the brand name AKTel.
In 2008, AK Khan and Company exited the business by selling its 30% stake to Japan's NTT Docomo for US$350 million.[3]
On March 28, 2010, the service name was rebranded as Robi which means Sun in Bengali. It also took the logo of parent company Axiata Group which itself also went through a major rebranding in 2009.[4]
In 2013, after five years of presence, Docomo reduced its ownership to 8% for Axiata to take 92%.[5]
On 28 January 2016, it was announced that Robi Axiata and Airtel Bangladesh will merge in Q1 2016. The combined entity will be called Robi, to serve about 40 million subscribers combined by both networks. Axiata Group will own 68.3% share, while Bharti Group will own 25%. The remaining shares will be owned by NTT Docomo.[6][7]
Numbering scheme
Robi uses the following numbering scheme for its subscribers:
+880 18 N1N2N3N4N5N6N7N8
Where, +880 is the International subscriber dialing code for Bangladesh.
18 is the access code for Robi as assigned by the Government of Bangladesh. Omitting +88 will require to use 0 in place of it instead to represent local call, hence 018 is the general access code.
N1N2N3N4N5N6N7N8 is the subscriber number.
Products offered
Robi offers an array of different packages. In addition to offering the fundamental pre-paid and post-paid mobile services, it offers a wide range of value-added products and services such as, SMS, GPRS, EDGE, 3.5G HSPA, international roaming, Mobile Banking, SMS banking, Caller Ring Back Tone, MMS, Voice Greetings, Welcome Tunes, Call Blocking[8] (on 4 August 2008 giving subscribers control over call reception) [9] and Bengali SMS. Robi has got the widest international roaming coverage among all the operators in Bangladesh.
Customer care
Robi has 32 Walk in Centers (WIC)[10] and 1 SSD (Sales and Support Desk) at Dhaka International Airport.
References
- ↑ "BTRC Report".
- ↑ "High price for new frequencies puts mobile operators in dilemma". Archived from the original on May 8, 2011. Retrieved Aug 29, 2012.
- ↑ "NTT DoCoMo to buy 30pc stake in AKTEL for $350m". The Daily Star. Retrieved 17 Oct 2015.
- ↑ "Aktel turns into Robi, takes a new logo". Dhaka Mirror. Retrieved 17 Oct 2015.
- ↑ "Japan’s Docomo shrinks stake in Robi". The Daily Star. Retrieved 17 Oct 2015.
- ↑ "Malaysia's Axiata and India's Bharti to merge subsidiaries". Reuters. 2016-01-28. Retrieved 2016-01-29.
- ↑ "Axiata and Bharti Airtel Agree to Merge Operations in Bangladesh". Axiata. 2016-01-28. Retrieved 2016-01-29.
- ↑ "Information by Bauani: Robi Call Block Service First Time in Bangladesh Can Block Call From Unwanted Numbers". Blog.bauani.org. 2008-08-05. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
- ↑ "The New Nation - Internet Edition". Nation.ittefaq.com. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
- ↑ "an AXIATA company". Robi. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
External links
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