The story
Founded by Iqbal Quadir in 1997.1
History
Iqbal Quadir, established Grameenphone to provide universal mobile access across Bangladesh, including its rural regions. He was inspired by the Grameen Bank micro-credit model and envisioned a business model where a cell phone can serve as a source of income. After leaving his job as an investment banker in the United States, Quadir met and successfully raised money from New York-based investor and philanthropist Joshua Mailman. He then returned to Bangladesh and worked for three years to gain support from organizations such as Grameen Bank and the Norwegian telecom company, Telenor. As part of this partnership, Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, created Grameen Telecom to be a major shareholder of Grameenphone.
Grameenphone was the first company to introduce GSM technology over 900 and 1800 MHz in Bangladesh. It was also the first company to introduce 5G network in the country, for which the first test was done in Dhaka and Chittagong metropolitan area in mid-2022. In September 2022, Grameenphone successfully conducted trials for the second time in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Khulna, Rajshahi, Barishal, Mymensingh and Rangpur cities.
On 1 September 2025, Grameenphone launched 5G services in Bangladesh with initial rollouts in the aforementioned cities, being the second telecom operator in Bangladesh after Robi to commercially launch 5G services.
Changing logo
On 16 November 2006, Grameenphone officially changed its logo to match its parent company Telenor's logo.
Community Information Centers
Community Information Center (CIC) or GPCIC was an initiative aimed at providing internet access and other communications services to rural areas. In February 2006, 26 CICs were established across the country as a pilot project. In this project, Grameenphone provided GSM/EDGE/GPRS infrastructure and technical support and other partners Grameen Telecom Corporation and Society for Economic and Basic Advancement (SEBA), were involved in selecting and training entrepreneurs to run the village centers. These CICs were used for a wide variety of business and personal purposes, from accessing health and agricultural information to using government services to video conferencing with relatives overseas. Grameenphone also trained entrepreneurs so that they could demonstrate to people how to set up an e-mail account and best make use of the Internet. Currently, none of the CICs are being operated by GP.
From Wikipedia’s article on Grameenphone, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4