Grameenphone Glitch Grinds Services to a Halt
Grameenphone, the country’s largest mobile operator with over 85 million subscribers, suffered a major network disruption on Wednesday afternoon, leaving millions of users without access to 4G internet and voice services for nearly 45 minutes.
The outage began shortly after 4:00 PM, affecting a wide swath of users across Bangladesh. By around 5:00 PM, services began to resume. During the disruption, Grameenphone users struggled to access data services, make voice calls, or use other essential mobile services.
The disruption impacted not only regular users but also critical government and security services, including the army, navy, air force, and police, many of which rely heavily on Grameenphone’s network for their communications infrastructure.
This incident marks the fourth major disruption to Grameenphone's services since February 2023. That month, damage to fiber-optic cables at "three separate locations" in the northern region of the country disrupted service. A similar problem occurred in September 2023, affecting users in several areas for around 30 minutes. Another nationwide outage followed in July 2024.
As with previous incidents, Grameenphone cited a "technical issue" as the cause of the latest interruption. In a statement, the company said:
“Our customers experienced network-related issues for a brief period. Our technical team has already resolved the problems promptly. We sincerely apologize for the temporary inconvenience.”
