Telenor and GrameenPhone Telecommunications in the fight against poverty Half the world's population has never made a phone call. Four out of five people do not have access to a reliable telecommunications network. He claimed that modern telecommunications and data communications may be an important escape route out of the poverty trap and he apealed to the telecom industry to look upon the Third World as markets of opportunity. Telenor has done so in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest and most densely populated countries, with 125 million inhabitants. The country has only 400,000 telephone lines, mainly to the largest towns and cities.
Mobile communication provides exciting development opportunities.
Telenor owns the GrameenPhone mobile company, which has almost 100,000 subscribers. Since the outset, Telenor has also provided expertise in the expansion of the company, which today covers the largest towns and the interconnecting railway network. A substantial part of this expansion is linked to the fibre-optic cable for railway signalling. As the mobile network expands and capacity increases, this will become a substantial operation for GrameenPhone. The village phone has gradually become a term that attracts considerable international attention and interest.