The reduced wholesale bandwidth price of Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd will come into effect from September 1.
The company’s Managing Director Monwar Hossain came up with the disclosure at a press conference at Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited office in the capital yesterday.
He also said Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL) will start exporting bandwidth – 10 gigabits per second – to the north-eastern Indian state of Tripura by September 1.
The submarine cable company decided to cut the wholesale prices of bandwidth by around 50% after getting directives from Sajeeb Wazed Joy, ICT affairs advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The decision was taken at the company’s board of directors meeting on Saturday last.
The new price would be effective on September 1 after getting final approval of the telecommunications division.
Each megabit per second (Mbps) bandwidth has been fixed at Tk625 while it will cost Tk800 for internet service providers.
The company has fixed Tk558 for each Mbps of bandwidth for a bundle of 20 gigabits, down from Tk980 earlier.
The new price will be effective for international gateway operators from September 1, said Monowar.
For internet service providers, however, each Mbps will cost Tk720 and they have to buy a minimum of 5 Gbps.
Samiul Islam, an internet user in Dhanmondi residential area, said despite cut in bandwidth price, finally end users do not get its ultimate benefit.
Akhtaruzzaman Manju, former president of Internet Service Provider Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) said price cut is not all to address the problems, per mitre cable charge is also very high, which needs to be emphasised.
“To get an ISP licence, an ISP provider has to pay Tk3 crore. Why would not the price be only Tk3 lakh. Moreover, equipment, cable prices are very high that shoot up our total cost,” he added.
Wishing anonymity, an internet-service provider told the Dhaka Tribune BTRC should issue more NTTN (Nationwide telecommunication transmission network) licences so that only two companies cannot capitalise on the entire NTTN business captive.
BSCCL has already established its connectivity up to the zero line at the border in Akhaura under Brahmanbaria district, but its counterpart, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, is yet to complete the task in its end. That is why bandwidth export is delaying, said managing director of the company.
In his written speech, Monowar also said currently of their total 200Gbps capacity, only 33 are being used locally and the use will increase up to 90Gbps by December 2016.
“As a large amount of Gbps still remains unused by that time, we have decided to export it.”
The company will export bandwidth at $10 per mbps—which is higher than its local market price—and earn $1.2 million or Tk9.6 crore in a year, added the official.
On June 5, during the Indian prime minister’s Dhaka visit, both the state-owned companies signed the deal for bandwidth export.
Bangladesh’s submarine cable, whose lifetime will end in next 12 years, has a bandwidth capacity of 200 Gbps, while it sells only 32 Gbps.
Bangladesh will get another undersea cable of around 1,400 Gbps in 2016.
Industry insiders say the country’s demand for bandwidth may reach 210 Gbps by 2021.
