Damage to Indian submarine cable hits Bangladesh internet speed

The internet connectivity has been disrupted since a December cyclone on the Indian Ocean hit one of the submarine cables connecting Bangladesh, Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) said in a statement yesterday. It added that the situation would become normal by January 20. Emdadul Haque, general secretary of ISPAB, told the Dhaka Tribune business would seriously be hit. Moreover, internet-based businesses will also suffer as it will take a long time to complete the necessary repairs. Last month the state-owned Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) said Bangladesh has over 200Gbps bandwidth, of which only 33% is consumed by domestic users, but this goes against the experience of many users over the past few weeks. The ISPAB yesterday offered an explanation as to why internet users in the country have been facing trouble with their connections since mid-December. “The daily internet usage has exceeded 400Gbps in Bangladesh and more than 75% of the bandwidth is imported from India,” the ISPAB said in a media release. The release also pointed to the 121 submarine telecommunications cable connecting India and Singapore. Cable 121 is owned by India’s Bharti Airtel Limited. The cable consists of eight fibre pairs using DWDM Multiplexing with full capacity of 8.4Tbit/s. Cable 121 has been down since 2am on  December 13, 2016 as the cable got severed at a point 40km from Chennai shore. Tata Indicom Cable (TIC) is another submarine cable linking India and Singapore. It spans 3.175km and the system comprises eight fibre pairs, operating at 64×10GBPs using DWDM technology, with a design capacity of 5.12Tbps. The TIC cable system is 100% owned and operated by Tata Communications. The TIC cable system went down at 1am on January 4. The India-Middle East-Western Europe submarine cable is an ultra-high capacity fibre optic submarine cable system which links India and Europe via the Middle East. This cable is also down. That is why Bangladesh internet users are experiencing slow speed. Routing of Cable 121 is expected on January 20 when the internet speed in Bangladesh will get back to normal again.