Muhammad Yunus may bring reforms to Bangladesh telecoms, mobile operator says

By Gianluca Lo Nostro and Olivier Sorgho

(Reuters) - With Muhammad Yunus in charge, Bangladesh may see much-needed reforms and investment in its telecoms sector given the caretaker government leader's knowledge of the industry, according to one of the country's leading mobile operators.

Yunus, who took over last Thursday, founded the Grameen Bank that won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the microcredit movement. He is also a stakeholder in Grameenphone, Bangladesh's leading telecom operator, jointly owned by Yunus' non-profit Grameen Telecom and Norway's Telenor, which holds 55% of Grameenphone's shares.

"I'm happy to see that the interim government leader is someone who is very familiar with our industry, who is very familiar with foreign direct investment and what international investors actually expect," Kaan Terzioglu, head of mobile operator Banglalink's parent company Veon, told Reuters.

Banglalink is the third-largest mobile operator in Bangladesh.

Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, executive director at Tech Global Institute, a tech policy and human rights non-profit, also said Yunus' experience would be useful in bringing reforms to a highly complex, competitive, and regulated telecom industry.

She also cited Yunus' work in advancing microfinancing as a pathway to lift people out of poverty, but noted that competition within traditional banking and mobile financial services as well as reforms to the financial sector would have to be addressed first.

Another challenge for the next Bangladeshi government will be reducing the significant unconnected population too.

More than half of the South Asian country's 170-million population has no access to a mobile network, while only a third can use mobile internet services, according to estimates by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association.

Mobile service taxes are also serving as a barrier to wider internet access, especially for low-income households, it said in a report.

Yunus will not be directly responsible for overseeing telecoms and information and communications technology.

On Friday, he appointed 26-year-old student Nahid Islam, who spearheaded the protests that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, as the new telecommunications minister.

(Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro and Olivier Sorgho, additional reporting by Fanny Potkin; editing by Milla Nissi and Tomasz Janowski)