DHAKA: Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited Company (BSCCL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Indian state owned telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited Company (BSNL) to export 10gbps internet bandwidth at BSCCL office in Dhaka on here the other day.
An internet bandwidth export deal is expected to be signed by the middle of January, under which Bangladesh will be sharing its unused speed with the seven Indian states in the east.
At present, Bangladesh uses only 25 gigabits per second or around 12% of the 200Gbps bandwidth made available by the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL), the lone submarine cable operator here.
According to a source, BSCCL officials will visit New Delhi in early January to finalise the deal.
We are very hopeful about inking the deal by the third week of January,” Monowar Hossain, managing director of BSCCL, told the Customs Today here the other day.
In February, Bangladesh government decided to export the unused bandwidth following a request from India in July last year seeking 40Gbps for their eight eastern states.
The BSCCL said the “Seven Sisters” Arunachal, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Shilong have a huge demand for bandwidth.
Currently, these states get connected to the “world wide web” via VSAT or satellite internet which is a lot more expensive compared to the underwater (submarine) or the over-land (terrestrial) connectivity that mainland India and Bangladesh enjoy.
Initially, the BSCCL projected a monthly earning of around Tk4.83 crore or $643,000 from the export of 40Gbps bandwidth; but the MoU for only 10Gbps bandwidth brought down the estimated monthly earnings to only Tk1.20 crore or $161,000.
BSCCL MD Monowar Hossain said India initially wanted to import 40Gbps; but because they still do not have the adequate infrastructure such as optical fiber connectivity in the eastern states, they have decided to cut it down to 10Gbps.
“As Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is in charge of our ministry [Post, Telecommunication and Information Technology], we need to send it for her approval,” Monowar Hossain said.
After singing of the deal, it will take four to five months to establish a network on both sides of the border for exporting the bandwidth, sources said.
