Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi are scheduled to formally inaugurate Bangladesh’s bandwidth export to India on March 23.
“It would be a gala ceremony to mark the maiden export of bandwidth, in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Prime Minister Naredra Modi will formally inaugurate bandwidth export through video conferencing,” said Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) Managing Director Monwar Hossain.
The programme would be held at 10:30am at the Prime Minister’s Office in Dhaka, he told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
On February 8, Bangladesh unofficially began bandwidth export to India through the Akhaura-Agartala border.
The Indian states of Assam and Meghalaya have also shown interest in importing bandwidth from Bangladesh, said Monwar.
“This bandwidth export has opened up a big opportunity for us. After exporting it to India, other countries will also want to import bandwidth from Bangladesh,” he added.
India is currently importing 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) bandwidth which will increase to 40Gbps later on, as per an agreement.
The BSCCL has the capacity to export up to 50Gbps of bandwidth.
The state-owned company signed a deal with the Indian state-owned BSNL on June 6 last year for exporting bandwidth during the Indian prime minister’s visit to Bangladesh.
According to the agreement, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) decided to import 10Gbps bandwidth for Tripura state from September last year, but the export timing had been fixed for August. Later, both parties missed the deadline.
The submarine cable company will get the payment at the beginning of each quarter while Bangladesh will earn Tk9.6 crore a year by exporting bandwidth to India.
Bangladesh has a bandwidth capacity of 200Gbps, of which only 33% is used.
In 2006, Bangladesh got connected to the current submarine cable at a cost of $63m.
Industry insiders say the country’s demand for bandwidth may reach 210Gbps by 2021.