Daily life has changed for many around the world, including Bangladesh, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
With the Covid-19 disease spreading, the country has implemented a nationwide shutdown forcing people to work remotely with internet services seeing substantial increases in data traffic.
Over the last 15 days, Bangladesh’s bandwidth usage has shot up by 150Gbps, says the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology.
On April 9, the highest bandwidth usage stood at 1,558 Gbps up from 1,400 Gbps on March 25, according to official figures, which said the highest usage in January was 1,270 Gbps.
“Bandwidth usage has increased in the country due to coronavirus and the sharp rise indicates that internet is very essential for us,” Telecoms Minister Mustafa Jabbar wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.
According to the industry insiders, data consumption started to increase after the coronavirus outbreak, when large corporations, like Grameenphone (GP), Banglalink, Robi and NGOs like Brac asked most of its staff to work from home.
GP had issued a notice for its 2,300 employees, allowing them to work from home, while Banglalink’s 1,100 employees received a similar notice.
NonBrac has asked its Dhaka headquarters-based 2,000 employees to work from home as a preventive measure against coronavirus infection.