Robi Axiata Limited, doing business as Robi, is the second largest mobile network operator in

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

currently owned by two major stakeholders being Axiata and

Bharti Airtel Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as (d/b/a) Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Currently, ...

. In this company, Axiata of

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

holds a major controlling stake of 61.82%,

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

holds 28.18%, and remaining 10% stake is hold by investors in DSE and

CSE CSE may refer to: Education Examinations * Certificate of Secondary Education, a secondary school qualification in the United Kingdom, replaced by the GCSE * Civil Services Examination, an examination to qualify for government service in India Fi ...

. Robi first commenced operation in 1997 as Telekom Malaysia International (

) with the brand name ‘AKTEL’. In 2010 the company was re-branded to ‘Robi’ and the company changed its name to Robi Axiata Limited. Robi Axiata has spectrum on GSM 900, 1800 and 2100 MHz bands. On 16 November 2016,

Airtel Bangladesh Airtel ( bn, এয়ারটেল) is a Bangladeshi telecommunications company. It was managed by Bharti Airtel Bangladesh until 2016, when Bharti Airtel Bangladesh merged its operations into Robi Axiata Ltd. Following the merger, Airtel Ba ...

was merged into Robi as a product brand of Robi, where Robi Axiata Limited is the licensee of Airtel brand only in Bangladesh. Having successfully completed the merger process, Robi has emerged as the second largest mobile phone operator in Bangladesh. Controversies:

History

Robi Axiata Limited started as a joint venture company between Telekom Malaysia and

AK Khan and Company A K Khan & Co. Ltd. is one of the oldest Bangladeshi conglomerates headquartered in Chittagong. It was established in 1945 by Abul Kashem Khan during the Second World War. Projects The company is planning to setup a tyre plant under joint collab ...

. It was formerly known as Telekom Malaysia International Bangladesh Limited which commenced operations in Bangladesh in 1997 with the brand name 'AKTEL'. In 2008, AK Khan and Company exited the business by selling its 30% stake to Japan's NTT Docomo for US$350 million. On 28 March 2010, 'AKTEL' was rebranded as 'Robi' which means "sun" in

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

. It also took the logo of parent company Axiata Group which itself also went through a major rebranding in 2009. In 2013, after five years of presence, Docomo reduced its ownership to 8% for Axiata to take 92%. On 28 January 2016, it was announced that Robi Axiata and

will merge in Q1 2016. The combined entity will be called Robi, to serve about 40 million subscribers combined by both networks. Axiata Group will own 68.3% share, while Bharti Group will own 25%, and NTT Docomo held 6.31% shares. Finally Robi and Airtel were merged on 16 November 2016 and Robi set sail as the merged company. Later on, in 2020, after a decade with Robi, NTT Docomo decided to leave Bangladesh by selling its remaining stake in Robi Axiata Limited to Bharti International. In August 2021, CEO Mahtab Uddin Ahmed stepped down as Robi CEO. Company CFO M Riyaaz Rasheed stepped in as acting CEO in addition to his current duties. Mobile network operator Robi Axiata Limited has appointed Rajeev Sethi as the company’s chief executive officer from October, 2022. He will be replacing M Riyaaz Rasheed, who has been serving as Robi’s acting chief executive officer since August 2021.

Achievements

In 2005, then AKTEL, now Robi, was the first operator to introduce GPRS and 3.5G services in the country. It is the first company to launch 4.5G service in all the 64 districts of the country. Robi also claims to have the widest international roaming coverage with 398 operators across 182 countries with widest 4G roaming footprint in 29 countries with 40 operators. Robi has clearly pioneered in the domain of mEducation with the creation of the largest online school of the country, Robi-10 Minute School, which is providing quality educational content to millions of students across the country for free of cost. Among many awards it has won nationally and internationally, the prestigious GSMA Glomo award for the Best Mobile Innovation for Education and Learning in the "Connected Life Awards" category at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017, is highly noteworthy.

Numbering scheme

Robi uses the following numbering scheme for its subscribers: +880 16 XXXXXXXX +880 18 XXXXXXXX Where, +880 is the International subscriber dialing code for Bangladesh. 18 and 16 is the access code for Robi as assigned by the Government of Bangladesh. Omitting +88 will require to use 0 in place of it instead to represent local call, hence 018 and 016 is the general access code. N₁N₂N₃N₄N₅N₆N₇N₈ is the subscriber number. After merger with airtel, besides '018', Robi owns '016' number series too. New system and regulations that: Any operator of (017-013)(019-014)(015) can change his operators by MNP.....

Network

Robi is currently the second largest mobile operator in Bangladesh in terms of total number of mobile towers or BTS. As of October 2021, Robi has a total of 13,812 BTS towers across the country.

Mobile services

Robi offers an array of different packages. In addition to offering the fundamental pre-paid and post-paid mobile services, it offers a wide range of value-added products and services such as,

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Insti ...

, EDGE,

3.5G High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunicat ...

HSPA+ Evolved High Speed Packet Access, HSPA+, HSPA (Plus) or HSPAP, is a technical standard for wireless broadband telecommunication. It is the second phase of HSPA which has been introduced in 3GPP release 7 and being further improved in later 3GPP ...

, 4.5G, LTE-A, Fixed Broadband, international roaming, Mobile Banking, SMS banking, Caller Ring Back Tone,

MMS MMS may refer to: Science and technology Network communication protocols * Multimedia Messaging Service for mobile phones * Microsoft Media Server, a content-streaming protocol (mms://) * Manufacturing Message Specification for real time proces ...

, Voice Greetings, Welcome Tunes etc. Robi has got the widest international roaming coverage among all the operators in Bangladesh.

Digital services

Robi provides different digital services. They are - *

10 Minute School 10 Minute School (, abbreviated as 10MS) is an online educational platform in Bangladesh created in 2015 by internet entrepreneur Ayman Sadiq. The platform covers academic classes from classes 1 to 12 covering the entire academic syllabus of the ...

- Online education platform *bdapps -

's national app store *BDTICKETS -

's largest online ticketing platform *Binge - Live TV & video streaming service. Built by Raskenlund and powered by RedDot Digital *Binge Box - Android TV set-top box *Duronto Browser - Bangladesh's first bangla

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

*Funflix - video streaming service powered by Bongo *GAME HUB - Online game store powered by E.B.Solutions *Islamic Portal - Islamic content service *Kuuk TV - video streaming service powered by Bongo *My Drive - Cloud storage powered by Funambol *Noor - Digital Islamic content service powered by Gakk Media *RedDot Digital - Marketing agency *Robi Apps Club - Subscription-based app store. Powered by Bemobi *Robi BoiGhor - eBook reader *Robi Intelligent Cam Pro - Online camera controller *Robi Intelligent Solutions - Smart home controller *Robi My Sports - Online Live sports service *Robi MyPlay - Online gaming service powered by Gakk Media *Robi Screen - video streaming service *Robi VTS - Vehicle Tracker *RobiCash - Digital wallet *Robishop - Online shopping *RobiTV+ - Live TV service powered by Bongo *Treasure Wars - Bangladeshi environment-based real-time battle royale game. Built by Riseup Labs *WINit - #1 quiz game in

References

{{Mobile network operators of Bangladesh Axiata Mobile phone companies of Bangladesh NTT Docomo Companies established in 1997 Telecommunications companies of Bangladesh Bharti Airtel