Regarding Bangladesh’s joining to the second submarine cable, Professor M Mahbubul Alam Joarder of Institute of Information Technology (IIT) at Dhaka University, told banglanews that the country is connected to a cable only. If anyhow it gets disconnected minimum seven to 10 days are necessary to repair the connection.
The disruption creates lots of problems to technology-related activities, the professor said adding “Bangladesh will be connected to South-East Asian, Middle East, African and Western European countries through this new cable”.
Joarder said country’s demand on internet bandwidth will be met through implementation of the project titled “Installation and Establishment of 2nd Submarine Cable System (SMW-5) for International Telecommunication in Bangladesh”.
The project cost has been estimated at Tk 660.64 crore. Of which, government will finance Tk 166 crore and Tk 352.64 will come as project aid. BSCCL itself will finance Tk 142.59 crore.
The project will be implemented by June, 2016. If the project was implemented Bangladesh will be added to a 300 gigabyte bandwidth internet connection.
Major works to build a land station has already been completed on a 10 acre of land in Kuakata. Land filling has already been completed. Some 360 pilling have been built for building construction.
Confirming the matter to banglanews, BSCCL managing director Monwar Hossain said Bangladesh has a demand of 1,300gbps bandwidth under the second submarine cable project.
Users will enjoy an uninterrupted internet connection, if the project implemented, he added.
Under the second submarine cable project, the amount of data will get increased through connecting to the more landing station at different part of the world. Country’s bandwidth supply will be increased in line with the rising demand. International communication will become multi-purposeful.
More opportunity to earn revenue in information technology (IT) sector will be created. IT service including call center, software development, freelancing and etc will be spread across the country.
The SEA-ME-WE 5 consortium consists of 15 leading telecom operators, including BSCCL, China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, China Unicom, Du, Orange, Myanmar Post and Telecom, Telin, Saudi Telecom, SingTel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telekom Malaysia, Telecom Italia Sparkle, TOT, and Telecom Yemen. The SMW5 consortium signed the construction and maintenance agreement on March 7, 2014.
French Alcatel-Lucent and Japanese NEC Corporation were awarded the SMW5 supply contracts. Alcatel-Lucent will supply the segments from Sri Lanka to France, while NEC will supply the Singapore to Sri Lanka segment.
BDST: 1529 HRS, DEC 24, 2014
