Over 12 lakh SIM users left Dhaka Tuesday

A total of 12.28 lakh mobile SIM subscribers left Dhaka on Tuesday to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr with their near and dear ones at their ancestral homes.

The mass flow was recorded on Tuesday, the last working day before the holidays marking the biggest religious festival for Muslims.

A total of 12.28 SIM subscribers of different mobile phone operators left the capital while people with 6.67 lakh SIMs entered Dhaka on the same day, Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

According to the minister, the data was collected from the mobile operators as the number of SIMs subscribers started increasing on a large scale compared to regular times.

A person may have more than one SIMs as they can subscribe to up to 15 SIMs, so the exact number of people cannot be determined by the number of SIMs left from Dhaka. But on average, 1.5 SIMs are used by an individual subscriber.

According to the latest data of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, the country has 18.27 crore SIMs subscribers of all four mobile operators. Among them, Grameenphone has the largest user base of around 8 crore SIMs.