Bangladesh added 13.29 million new cellphone subscribers during July 2009-June 2010, taking the total number of users to 59.98 million.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission's data, released Tuesday, showed that the six top mobile operators added 1.52 million new subscribers as on June 30 this year.

An executive of a mobile company claimed that the number of subscribers would have been greater if the government had not imposed the tax of Taka 800 that they have to pay for each SIM.

Mobile operators claim that they gave 'subsidy' to each new subscriber by selling every SIM at a price much below Taka 800 ($12), mainly because of the fierce competition between mobile companies, New Age newspaper said.

The largest operator, Grameenphone, added 5.3 million subscribers in the just concluded financial year, and added 0.91 million consumers in June to take its total subscriber base to 26.46 million.

Warid Telecom added 0.59 million subscribers in a year, and the total number of its subscribers reached 3.17 million at the end of the last financial year.