Barriers to entry, identified as one of the five forces, presents five structural determinants that affect a company’s ability to enter new markets; economies of scale, product differentiation, government as with telecom licences for example, favourable access to the distribution channels and capital requirements (Whittington and Melin, 2005). The government policies and regulations could also impose a significant barrier to entry in the telecom industry. For example, this industry is getting more concerned about the customers’ convenience, setting competitive price structure, invest in corporate social responsibilities which could be difficult to maintain by a new company.
Potential direct entrants (entrants focusing on directly coming into the country) to the telecom industry in Bangladesh is relatively restricted at the moment, due to control over licenses. However, recently companies are finding other ways to penetrate the industry, that is, through merging with existing market members. Recently Airtel merged with Warid Telecom through acquisition of majority share in order to enter the Bangladesh market. Other potential entrants who may be interested to come to Bangladesh include Reliance Telecom and Tata Indicom.