Vietnam's Viettel telecom has expressed its keen interest to buy stakes and invest 250 million U.S. dollars in Bangladesh's state-owned cell phone company Teletalk, said a senior spokesman of the South Asian country's telecommunications ministry here in Dhaka on Thursday.
Quoting the Bangladeshi Posts and Telecommunications Minister Razi Uddin Ahmed Razu, the spokesman Shafayet Hossain told Xinhua on Thursday, "Viettel expressed its keen interest to become a partner of Teletalk and invest 250 million U.S. dollars."
He said the Viettel's expression of interest came when the Bangladeshi minister at the sideline of the meeting of the World Information Technology Forum-2009 held a meeting with the senior officials of the company in Hanoi last month.
"Vietnam's state-owned entity will send its expression of interest through a letter formally in a week," he quoted the minister as saying.
Of total number of Bangladesh's 48.91 million mobile phone users at the end of the September this year, the Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd, incorporated in December 2004, has 1.08 billion subscribers.
On possible terms of agreement, the spokesman said the company will reinvest instead of taking out any profits from the investment in Bangladesh in three-five years.
After that, Viettel will start taking profits from Bangladesh for 15 years before winding up, he said adding like in Vietnam, it will also provide free Internet connectivity in educational institutions in Bangladesh.
Vietnamese mobile-phone company will set up 19,500 base transceiver stations and bring 3.5 million customers more under the network and set up 50,000-kilometre fiber cables, introduce 3Gmobile technology, the spokesman said.
According to the spokesman, around 80 people of Vietnam have access to mobile phones and Viettel provides them free telephone sets and Internet link.