An internet bandwidth export deal is expected to be signed by the middle of January, under which Bangladesh will be sharing its unused speed with the seven Indian states in the east.
At present, Bangladesh uses only 25 gigabits per second or around 12% of the 200Gbps bandwidth made available by the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL), the lone submarine cable operator here.
The Bangladesh and Indian authorities have been discussing the matter over the last couple of weeks. According to a source, BSCCL officials will visit New Delhi in early January to finalise the deal.
“We have received an invitation letter from our Indian counterpart BSNL yesterday [Tuesday]. We are very hopeful about inking the deal by the third week of January,” Monowar Hossain, managing director of BSCCL, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
Top officials of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), India’s state-owned telecommunication company, have already visited Bangladesh twice. In May, they signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in this regard.
In February, Bangladesh government decided to export the unused bandwidth following a request from India in July last year seeking 40Gbps for their eight eastern states.
The BSCCL said the “Seven Sisters” - Arunachal, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Shilong – have a huge demand for bandwidth.
Currently, these states get connected to the “world wide web” via VSAT or satellite internet which is a lot more expensive compared to the underwater (submarine) or the over-land (terrestrial) connectivity that mainland India and Bangladesh enjoy.
Initially, the BSCCL projected a monthly earning of around Tk4.83 crore or $643,000 from the export of 40Gbps bandwidth; but the MoU for only 10Gbps bandwidth brought down the estimated monthly earnings to only Tk1.20 crore or $161,000.
BSCCL MD Monowar Hossain said India initially wanted to import 40Gbps; but because they still do not have the adequate infrastructure such as optical fibre connectivity in the eastern states, they have decided to cut it down to 10Gbps.
“As Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is in charge of our ministry [Post, Telecommunication and Information Technology], we need to send it for her approval,” Monowar Hossain said.
After singing of the deal, it will take four to five months to establish a network on both sides of the border for exporting the bandwidth, sources said.
The export of bandwidth is not like the export of tangible goods. Just like electricity, bandwidth too needs connectivity for being exported or transmitted.
One more similarity between bandwidth and electricity is that they cannot be stored; unless bandwidth cannot be used, it has to be shared; otherwise it will get wasted.
Bangladesh has not been able to domestically use the entire of the available 200Gbps bandwidth mainly because of the price of each Mbps that the government has fixed.
Currently, local operators pay Tk1,300 for each Mbps bandwidth from the BSCCL. However, some private distributors get to import bandwidth from mainland India at around Tk600-Tk700/Mbps.
Monowar said: “As BSNL is purchasing in bulk, the price we have quoted will be marginally less than the price charged here.”
BSCCL has selected three points for establishing links with the Indian states. Both parties have agreed that the first connection will pass from Akhaura in Bangladesh’s Brahmanbaria district to Agartala, the capital of the Indian state of Tripura.
According to sources, BSCCL expects India to import more than 100Gbps within a year or two when Bangladesh gets connected with the second submarine consortium SE-ME-WE-5 in 2016.
Industry insiders say Bangladesh has the demand at home. Although the export will bring in foreign currency with immediate effect, the better option would been ensuring domestic usage of the entire available bandwidth; that would benefit Bangladesh in the long-run.