About Village Phone

About Village Phone Program

Grameen Telecom launched its fascinating program, Village Phone (VP) on 26 March 1997 with a vision to bridge the technological gap between urban and rural Bangladesh through affordable mobile technology. This program is uniquely designed only for Grameen Bank borrowers.

Back in 1997, mobile telephone was a luxury product in context of urban areas of Bangladesh and was a fairy-tale for rural areas. Money wasn’t the only criteria to get a cell phone connection, people would also need influential support from high officials to pursue the process of spreading connectivity through rural Bangladesh.

With extensive success in microcredit program with rural poor, Professor Muhammad Yunus came up with an idea to address the issue was a high ambitious attempted to set up at least one phone in one village to serve the potential demand of telephone services. Village Phone was also introduced as unique poverty fighting tool, made up by combining entrepreneurship skill of Grameen Bank female members. The selected member, known as “Village Phone Lady” and she would use it as commercial pay phone and would sell the airtime to the villagers. To facilitate the program, a new department was formed under Grameen Telecom named as Village Phone Department .

Village phone program was commercially inaugurated on the 26 March 1997 with the first ever village phone lady Laily Begum from Patira, Dakhin khan, Dhaka. Commercial operation of Grameenphone was also launched on the same day.

Village Phone at a glance

Total subscribers: 1,753,336
(updated on December 31, 2019)

Nationwide Village Phone Coverage:
Units Offices: 20
- VP Agents: 275
- Villages covered: 83,000+ (out of 85,500 villages)
- Districts: 64

Village Phone Concept

- Provide affordable and easy access to telephone services, all over rural Bangladesh.
- Bridge the information gap between rural and urban areas.
- Create new technology based income generating opportunities for the rural population with a vision to alleviate poverty.
- Make communication technology available to the doorsteps of villagers.
- Empower rural Bangladesh.
- Create a mobile phone community.

Village Phone Impact

- Socio-economic Empowerment.
- Easy technological access for rural communities.
- Bridging the digital gap.
- Community empowerment through technology.
- Improving standard of living.
- Creating opportunity for potential new businesses.
- Children growing up with technological advancement.