Grameen Phone: Oligopoly and beyond
Musabber Islam, School of Business (IUB)
There is a competition going on our mobile telecommunication sector. On the celebration of Grameen Phone's reaching one million subscribers, I do not feel the pride as a Grameen Phone subscriber. Let me describe the whole thing, The City Cell first introduced mobile phones in our country and started a monopoly when the BNP first came to power. And then the AL came to power and turned the monopoly into and oligopolistic situation. Now you want to know that what Oligopoly means is! Oligopoly exists when a few large firms (like Aktel, Grameen, City Cell) providing a homogeneous or differentiated product or service. Here, 'fewness' means that the firms are mutually interdependent in that each must consider the possible reactions of its rivals to its price, advertising and also product development decisions. Also the term 'homogeneous' means that in an oligopolistic situation the industry may produce standardised, or differentiate products or service that are very much identical (as you see there is not much difference among GP, Aktel and City Cell service). Also in the oligopoly situation the firms are mutually interdependent to each other about their price rates and who knows maybe there is a secret cartel exist like OPEC. So in our country, the people who are now using GP mobile phones are bound to accept every term of their mobile service provider though many are unsatisfied about GP's service. Because the options are not many the other two service providers (Aktel and City Cell) are almost the same. As the world moves towards 3G and 4G mobile technology, it's time to break up this oligopolistic market of mobile service provider companies in the country to create an open market (which means pure competition); and if then someone reaches one million subscriber-base, I will really feel proud of that company.
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