The use of the country’s own internet bandwidth suffered negative growth for the first time after being connected with the submarine cable, as Indian bandwidths are available through five active International Terrestrial Cables (ICTs) connections, sources said.
Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) witnessed about 1% negative growth in uses of bandwidth in the first half of this year from the immediate past half-yearly growth of 46.6%, according to a document obtained by the Dhaka Tribune.
After June, local bandwidth uses stood at 38.29 Gbps (Giga bites per second) as compared to 38.60 Gbps till December last year.
BSCCL would present the situation at a meeting with the parliamentary standing committee on Ministry of Post and Telecommunications scheduled for today.
“ICTs have de-stabilised the bandwidth business in the name of competition. They are not importing quality bandwidth from the neighboring country, but the customers are going to them due to lower price fixed by the government,” Md Monwar Hossain, managing director and chief executive officer of BSCCL told the Dhaka Tribune.
Though the operators made alternative connections with India, it added some value to our software and outsourcing business, he said. “But, when we will connect (by end of 2014) with our second submarine connection, these ICTs will have no function.”
Five private ICTs are importing 15 Gbps bandwidth from India through fiber optic cable since the beginning of this year and it is increasing gradually, market sources informed.
“It’s true we are importing bandwidth but we also made the country always connected with the globe and as we are giving quality services, customers coming to us,” said Sumon Ahmed Sabir, chief strategic officer of Fibre@Home.
In 2012, telecommunication regulatory commission, BTRC, awarded six ICT licences. Out of them Novocom Limited, Firber@Home Limited, 1Asia Alliance Communications Limited, Mango Teleservices Limited and Summit Communications Limited are connected with Indian submarine cable through fiber optic cable.
BD Link Communications Limited has not yet started their commercial run. BTRC also going to award another licence and it would be for BTCL, a state-owned company.
Bangladesh is connected with submarine cable since May 2006 as a project of the government which contains only a bandwidth of 7.5 Gbps and it started as a company since June 2008.
Currently, Bangladesh’s total bandwidth is 200 Gbps and it would jump after being connected with the second submarine cable.
