The network service of mobile operator Grameenphone was restored across the country on Thursday after over two hours of disruption after a fibre cable was cut.
Khairul Basher, head of communications at Grameenphone, said the network was restored at 1:47pm after about two hours of disruption.
According to AKM Al-Amin, Grameenphone's head of network services, the interruption was caused by damage to fiber-optic cables during construction work on highways in Dhaka-Gazipur, Tangail-Sirajganj, and Elenga-Jamalpur.
Mustafa Jabbar, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, stated it was an accident.
The first incident occurred on the Elenga-Jamalpur route when a tractor collided with the underground cables during expansion work.
Though the official said that the network was disrupted for two hours, the users were complaining of connectivity issues before 11am on Thursday.
The minister also said that there should be coordination between road construction officials and operators to prevent such network disruption in future.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) issued a letter to the top telecom operator seeking an explanation for the network failure.
Many users on Thursday morning posted on social media platforms mentioning that they were unable to call other GP numbers.
Later, the mobile phone operator posted a notice on their Facebook page which reads: "We sincerely apologize for the temporary problem in making calls which happened due to fiber cable cut.”
“Our team is working with utmost priority to solve the issue quickly,” reads the post.
Grameenphone informed the media that it employs DWDR technology and that the damage was done to the operator's own backbone cable. The deployment of cutting-edge technology enabled quick restoration, according to Sajjad Hasib, CMO of Grameenphone.
It normally takes at least 8 hours and up to 72 hours to find and repair cable cuts, he added.
Regarding a question of the number of clients affected in the network outage, he said that the actual figure shall have to be determined and released to the media subsequently.
Earlier in June, 2022, BTRC put an indefinite ban on the sale of SIMs by Grameenphone for failing to provide quality services of voice calls and internet.
On January 3 of this year, the government lifted the ban on GP SIM card sales.