Yesterday, users of the leading mobile phone operator in the country were left without any connection for hours -- not an encouraging sign for a nation that now not only wants to be considered digital, but smart.
While disruptions occur in every nation and across sectors, it is the cause for this outage that gives us cause for pause.
Indeed, it is very concerning to know that the outage happened due to damage to fibre-optic cables during construction work on roads in Gazipur, Tangail and Sirajganj.
This newspaper has spoken at length of unchecked urbanization, and of our approach lacking not only proper planning, but oftentimes, blatant disregard. The fact that construction work on roads in this country could lead to a network disruption of the largest mobile phone operator for hours on end is an ominous sign, one not befitting a nation such as ours.
Yes, Posts and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar said it was an accident, with the minister also saying that there should be coordination between road construction officials and operators to prevent such network disruption in future -- but it should never have happened in the first place.
Incidents like this cannot be swept under the rug; we must learn from such experiences, admit to our shortcomings, which in this case is clearly a blatant lack of coordination but also disregard on the part of the construction workers.
If this country is to truly become “Smart Bangladesh” then we need to start getting smarter about how we operate. This incident was not a good look for the nation, and we must do better.
