The number of mobile subscribers in Bangladesh grew by more than twelve million, or 120%, in 2006, to stand at 22 million at the end of the year, according to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission. The regulator reported that the country’s five cellcos signed up 2.56 million new subscribers in December alone.

Doubling (or bettering that) the number of cell phone subscribers has become the standard throughout the developing world, so let’s project another doubling in 2007, which would bring the number of subscribers to 44 million. That’s nearly one cell phone for every three people. Before GrameenPhone started service, Bangladesh counted one phone for every 500 people. That’s night and day–a whole new country.

Market leader GrameenPhone ended the year with 10.76 million GSM customers after adding nearly 5.22 million in 2006, Aktel acquired 3.93 million new subscribers to take its total to six million, Banglalink’s user base grew by 2.61 million to 3.64 million, and the sole CDMA operator CityCell reached nearly one million customers from 440,000 at end-2005. State-run Teletalk acquired nearly 400,000 customers in 2006, whilst the sixth mobile licensee, Warid Telecom, is expected to launch commercial GSM services by April.

As GrameenPhone celebrates the 10th anniversary of being awarded a cellphone license in Bangladesh with its 10 millionth customer, it also celebrates 123% growth in subscribers year to year (after the 3rd quarter results). Market share remains steady at 63%.

With new competition from Egypt’s Orascom, prices are dropping and average revenue per user is down. But this is good for Bangladesh, where fewer than 1% of the population had a phone 10 years ago. Today, teledensity is about 8% and moving upward fast.