Country’s electronics giant Walton Hi-Tech Industries Limited registered a 13.24 percent growth in its television, electrical and home appliances sales of the July- September quarter of current financial year compared to previous year.

In the same period, Walton posted around Tk 401 crore net profits and also its per-share net asset value rose to Tk 278 as of September 30 from its earlier Tk 261.92 of June 30 this year.

Walton Hi-Tech disclosed these at its recent published unaudited financial statement for the first quarter (July-September) of the current financial year, reports a press release.

According to its financial statement, Walton Hi-Tech recorded total sales of around Tk 1572.40 crore in the first quarter of the current financial year. Of which, sales of Walton’s TV, electrical and home appliances rose 13.24 per cent at the same time.

Amid the business and economic downturn situation following the coronavirus pandemic, Walton posted sales of Tk 1572.42 crore as well as net profits of Tk 401 crore, giving the sign of successful return to the company’s previous vigorous sales track, the market insider said.

Walton Hi-Tech Industries Managing Director Engineer Golam Murshed said, coronavirus pandemic had a big blow to the country’s all business sectors.

Following the lockdown for the period of more than two months, the country’s overall business activities became stagnant, he said added that but now the country’s business and economic activities has been started returning to normalcy very rapidly from the end of May for lifting the lockdown.

Walton also successfully returned to its previous sound business track by rapidly recovering the pandemic loss, saying it he noted that both the domestic and international sales of Walton were gone up sharply in the second quarter of the current financial year.

Walton declared 200 percent cash dividends for general investors while for directors, it would be 75 per cent for the year that ended on June 30, 2020.

Also read: Walton shares Tk 77cr profits with employees

Four companies – which got telecom tower license in 2018 – are stepping up efforts to set up more infrastructures for the operators to help them improve service quality.  

The license has allowed the companies to build mobile towers and share those with telecom operators taking service fees.

And Banglalink has activated its first mobile tower set up under its agreement with Summit Towers Limited. It is one of the 259 towers that Summit will build for the telecom operator.

AB High Tech Consortium's Chief Executive Officer Manjurul Hasan said they agreed to build 100 towers for Robi and already handed over 48 to the telecom operator. "We hope to complete the rest of the work within this month."

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission Chairman Md Jahurul Haque said, "We are always interested in exploring the possibilities of new regulatory frameworks for enabling telecom operators to serve their customers better." 

Banglalink's Chief Technology Officer Pierre Boutros Obeid said: "The activation of this mobile tower under the new towerco regime is a very important milestone for us, as it marks the beginning of a new expansion of our network."

Summit Communications Managing Director Md Arif Al Islam said: "We are proud of becoming the first tower company to start tower services, with an approved service level agreement, under the new towerco regime."

Banglalink has activated its first mobile tower set up under its agreement with Summit Towers Limited.

Located in Narayanganj's Siddhirganj, it is one of the 259 towers that Summit will set up for Banglalink, read a press release issued on Monday.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) gave the licenses for tower operation to four companies, allowing them to build mobile towers and share those with telecom operators in exchange for service fees.

BTRC Chairman Md Jahurul Haque said, "We are always interested in exploring the possibilities of new regulatory frameworks for enabling telecom operators to serve their customers better."

Banglalink's Chief Technology Officer Pierre Boutros Obeid said: "The activation of this mobile tower under the new towerco regime is a very important milestone for us, as it marks the beginning of a new expansion of our network that will allow more people to gain access to the fastest 4G network in the country as measured by Ookla."

Summit Communications Managing Director Md Arif Al Islam said: "We are proud of becoming the first tower company to start tower services, with an approved service level agreement, under the new towerco regime."

In the recently-concluded 11th Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF) in Shanghai, Huawei brought together global carriers, industry chain partners, vertical leaders, and research organisations to discuss the possibilities of 5G and share its insight on the industry trends and how innovation in new technology can accelerate an intelligent world.

On the first day of the open online forum, Ryan Ding, Executive Director and President of the Carrier Business Group, Huawei, gave his keynote speech titled ‘Maximising Wireless Network Value for a Golden Decade of 5G’.

Ding said the coming decade will be a golden age for 5G’s progress around the world and that the whole industry must have faith in 5G, build the best 5G networks, and make the most of them for shared value.

5G is developing much faster than previous generations. There are currently more than 100 commercial 5G networks worldwide, and leading carriers are already benefitting from 5G data plans.

To further develop 5G and encourage more people to embrace it, carriers need to build the best 5G networks possible. The telecom sector needs to provide fundamental network capabilities, highly reliable network services, and flexible networking solutions necessary for industrial 5G applications to meet these diverse needs, a press release from Huawei said.

The telecom sector will also need to make improvements from end to end, ranging from network planning, construction, maintenance, and optimization to operations. This will help reduce the costs of deploying industry applications. Ding emphasized that developing industrial 5G applications is an industry-wide effort, rather than just carriers’ responsibility. Accelerating this development is only possible when telecommunications integrates with other industries.

At the 11th Global Mobile Broadband Forum, Huawei has shared insights into global industry trends and hot topics with carriers, regulators, partners, and media analysts from around the world. They explored how innovation in ICT technologies such as 5G and AI can be mutually beneficial to industries and society at large.

The country's second-largest mobile operator Robi will offer a low-cost internet data package for university teachers and students to support online education.

University Grants Commission (UGC) and Robi Axiata Limited signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) about this on Sunday.

UGC Chairman Professor Kazi Shahidullah said the main barrier to online education is access to device and data, which will be resolved soon with the joint efforts of UGC and the mobile operators.

The new agreement will allow users to get 30GB of data at Tk220, for a month, from Sunday for Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, and Gmail.

But this data package will not apply to the use of Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, read a press release.

Also, mobile operators Teletalk and Grameenphone are providing a cheap data package for university teachers and students. UGC signed an MoU with Grameenphone on Thursday.

On November 4, UGC also decided to provide interest-free loans to 41,501 insolvent students of public universities for buying a smartphone to ensure their participation in online classes amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Each student from 39 public universities will get a maximum of Tk8,000 as a soft loan.

Also read: UGC, GP sign MoU to facilitate online classes of public, pvt univs