Robi

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Robi Axiata Limited
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 Increase 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.com.bd

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.

File:Robi corporate office.jpg
Robi Axiata Limited Corporate Headquarters

Customer care

Robi has 32 Walk in Centers (WIC)[10] and 1 SSD (Sales and Support Desk) at Dhaka International Airport.

References

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External links