The company will invest around $250 million in network expansion next year in its quest to reach the magic figure of four million, a senior official of GP said yesterday.

"The new investment is expected to bring 60 percent of the total population of Bangladesh under its network coverage," GP's Director (Sales and Marketing) Mehboob Chowdhury told The Daily Star during an iftar party yesterday.

He said Bangladesh has huge potentials for growth in telecommunication services in the coming year as the market has started to take off.

"The market will grow further if government waives tax on mobile handset. It would also stop smuggling of handset into the country," he added.

On the occasion of Eid, GP will offer attractive packages with lower tariff, he observed.

GP has doubled its subscribers' number to two million in August this year and forecasts the market could grow by five times of its present subscriber base in next three years.

Bangladeshi cellphone users could grow up to 15 million in next three years but the lack of basic telephone services to cater for growing telecommunication needs of the country will hinder that.

GP, which uses GSM (global system for mobile communications) technology and has a 51 percent ownership of Norwegian state-run company Telenor, had one million users at the end of August last year.

It has about 60 percent of Bangladesh's three million mobile phone subscribers, with the remaining 40 percent shared by three other private operators.

GP has spent $160 million on network expansion this year and hopes to bridge every corner of Bangladesh by the year of 2007.

The company's operating revenues jumped by around 50 percent to Tk 12 billion ($202 million) in 2003, riding on strong subscriber growth.

GP, which started operations in 1997, has also a 35 percent share by Bangladesh's Grameen Telecom, 9.5 percent by Japan's Marubeni Corp and 4.5 percent by Gonofone Development Corp, a New York-based development company.