BSCCL inks deal to connect to 3rd submarine cable

Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) has signed an agreement with the SEA-ME-WE 6 consortium to connect to the third submarine cable.

Md Afzal Hossain, secretary of the Posts and Telecommunications Division and chairman of the BSCCL board of directors, signed the deal on behalf of BSCCL in the presence of Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar at InterContinental Dhaka on Thursday.

The consortium’s member organisations will sign similar agreements on behalf of their respective organisations in their respective countries and send those to the temporary headquarters of the consortium in Singapore by September 30.

Jabbar said the SEA-ME-WE 6 project would make an unimaginable contribution in establishing uninterrupted connectivity by meeting the growing demand for digital connectivity in the days to come. He described the submarine cable as one of the essential telecommunication infrastructures in the country.

“The government declined the submarine cable connection offer in 1992, leaving 14 years behind in the world of information technology. We are now working to provide high-speed broadband connection in every union, including char and remote hilly areas,” he said.

He said 110 million people in the country are now using 2,700 Gbps of bandwidth.

Seven lakh users consumed 8 Gbps of bandwidth when the journey of Digital Bangladesh started in 2008, he said.

He also said Bangladesh entered the era of international telecommunication connectivity on June 14, 1975, under the patronage of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Apart from setting up a ground satellite centre in Betbunia, Bangabandhu sowed the seeds of Digital Bangladesh by getting the International Telecommunication Union and the Universal Postal Union memberships and also establishing the T&T board, he added.

BSCCL Managing Director Mashiur Rahman said the company launched the country’s second submarine cable in Kuakata in 2017, and its capacity was much higher than that of the first.

“Soon after becoming the posts and telecommunications minister, Jabbar told me the second submarine cable’s capacity would not cope with the expansion of broadband services in the country. He directed me to quickly take the initiative to connect to a third submarine cable.”

He said BSCCL alone is providing 1,650 Gbps of the 2,700 Gbps of bandwidth currently being used in the country.

A Posts and Telecommunications Division press release said the first submarine cable was commissioned in the country in 2006. By 2024, the country will need more than 6,000 Gbps of international bandwidth.

In the meantime, BSCCL has signed a new agreement with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, a state-owned telecommunications service provider in India, to export 10 Gbps of bandwidth.

It has also signed two contracts with Saudi Arabia and France for a long-term lease of the unused bandwidth of the second submarine cable’s European side.

Another agreement on this is to be signed with Malaysia.