The government has approved a proposal for exporting half of the country’s internet bandwidth to the northeastern Indian states and any other country in that region as Bangladesh can hardly use 16% of its total bandwidth.
The approval came at an inter-ministerial meeting where the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL), which had placed the proposal, demonstrated that the country could earn at least Tk60 crore from the exports.
High officials of the ministries of posts and telecommunications, finance, and foreign affairs were present at the meeting held last week.
“The government has given us approval for renting or leasing 40 lakh MIU-kilometres of internet bandwidth as we have a total of 82MIU-km of unused bandwidth,” Monwar Hossain, managing director of the BSCCL, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
India has already formally expressed interest to rent bandwidth from Bangladesh, but the BSCCL has other options, too.
“Malaysia, Italy and Singapore are also on our list,” Monwar said, adding that they had “fruitful discussions” with these three countries.
The process of exporting bandwidth to these countries might start any time, he told the Dhaka Tribune.
The BSCCL has 200Gbps (88MIU-km) bandwidth and currently Bangladesh can use only 32Gbps or 16% of it.
The BSCCL MD said the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable had already spent eight years of its 12-year lifetime and the cable would expire in 2025.
“If we do not export or use the bandwidth now, it will be a waste,” Monwar said.
He said the Indian states of Arunachal, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim had a great demand for bandwidth. Bhutan and Nepal had also shown interest in importing bandwidth from Bangladesh.
According to the meeting’s working paper, the BSCCL also said it was planning to export bandwidth after keeping sufficient amount for meeting the country’s future demands.
The country is going to add 1,400Gbps more bandwidth after 2015 when the BSCCL will connect with the SEA-ME-WE-5 cable.
Monwar said they would sign a contract with the SEA-ME-WE-5 authority on March 7 in Malaysia.
“We will connect with the second submarine cable by the first quarter of 2016 and the cable will have a total capacity of 1,400Gbps,” he said.
Installation of the second submarine cable was scheduled to complete by December 2014, but it could not because of a few complexities.
Telecom Secretary M Abubakar Siddique, however, said: “The installation work is progressing fast and it will connect Bangladesh through a landing station in Patuakhali.” The construction work of the landing station had so far progressed up to the expected level, he added.
Sources at the BSCCL said Bangladesh required to invest $70m (Tk540 crore) to be connected with the second submarine cable.
The Islamic Development Bank will provide $40m while the rest will come from the BSCCL’s own fund.
The BSCCL has already arranged Tk130 crore and still requires Tk100 crore more. The amount will be mobilised by selling the surplus bandwidth of the SEA- ME-WE-4 cable.
