Friday, April 26, 2024
Rifat Islam
With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, consumption of bandwidth increased sharply as people joined offices from home but the profit of service providers came down with soaring operational costs.
According to International Internet Gateway Forum’s data, as of Tuesday, the country’s internet bandwidth consumption stood at 2000 GBps, up by 25 per cent from 1600 GBps in March 2020.
The service providers had to increase their bandwidth spectrum at least by 30 per cent and employ more people to cope with the increased demand from internet users. It increased the operational cost that thinned their profits margin, the service providers said.
“With the increase in new household connections, we had to increase our workforce, provide them with safety equipment, employ more engineers and linemen. This increases the costs. Small ISPs who only provide connections offices or home are in bad shape,” said Aminul Hakim, president of the Internet Service Provider Association of Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission’s data shows there are nearly 1 crore subscribers of broadband internet services till February this year.
Dependency on internet increased in social and personal communications, home office, online class, government services, outsourcing, shopping, telemedicine services and even the trend of watching entertainment programmes on various streaming sites and apps.
"Our customers used to use 10 GBps bandwidth during normal times but now it rose to 16-18 GBps. Many customers have increased bandwidth but their tariff remained the same or even waved in cases. Because, if the bandwidth is not increased, they will move to another ISP. We have to maintain the customer service too,” said Hakim, also CEO of Amber IT Limited.
Internet Service Providers are categorised in various steps in accordance to their work radius. According to BTRC there are 129 Nationwide, 70 Central Zone, and 76 Zonal licensed ISPs. IIGs estimate the number of total ISPs in all categories is more than 2,000.
Kamal Ahmed Selim, President of Cyber Cafe Owners’ Association of Bangladesh, said that his company BCL Online Service failed to realise 60 per cent of bills from subscribers.
“We have sought incentives from the government. But no avail. We are buying bandwidth in the pre-paid system from IIGs and others suppliers. Though they didn’t even help us giving discounts or any kind of wavers,” Selim added.
Rajib Khan, the owner of Image IT online services, one of the 10 district level operators in Munshiganj, believes his business is in severe crisis. Alongside tough business competition in a small radius area, unlicensed operators are buying bandwidth from the nation or zonal providers making it hard for operators like him to survive in business.
“It hurts us. Along with staff and operating costs, we’ve to pay for our licenses and taxes,” Khan added.
Sarowar Alam Sikder, President of the IIG Forum, blamed high operating and maintenance cost for a thin profit margin of ISPs.
He said companies like Grameenphone, which provide broadband services, buy bandwidth costing only three per cent of their investments. The rest of the 97 per cent is their other establishment and operational cost.
“The service takes various steps to cross like IIG, ISP, and ITC to deliver services to subscribers. In every step, abnormal growth occurred. Normally this brought some complications,” Sikder added.
According to the ‘Speedtest’ global index, Bangladesh ranked 136th in the world for mobile internet speed and 99th for fixed broadband speed in March 2021.
Broadband internet users in Bangladesh are complaining of low quality, poor speed and high tariff for a long.
In December 2016, the BTRC set a minimum speed of 10 MBps for broadband. But most of the operators failed to meet that target.
Rasel Sarker, a journalist who lives at Nazimuddin Road in Dhaka, said he often found it difficult to carry out his everyday works using his 8Mbps internet package for Tk 800 a month.
“A Zoom meeting or a YouTube video exceeding resolution of 360 pixel is rare to attend uninterrupted,” Sarker said.
ISP owners said that such a problem takes place because most of the household internet connections are ‘shared’ service instead of a pricy ‘dedicated’ connection for a single user.
A shared internet connection means that all bandwidth is split among all users and devices. With many people got connected at any given time, the bandwidth is shared among all of them.
If Sarker used an 8MBps dedicated connection it can cost Tk 2800, meaning Tk 350 per 1MBps.
For such a high subscription fee, ISP owners are more interested in selling ‘shared’ internet connections. For this, they have to do businesses on large scales to make a good profit.
About their business model, Sarowar Alam Sikder, president of the IIG Forum, explained if a provider sells bandwidth at his buying rate or less than it, he also can make a profit. “A subscriber may use it for three hours a day. When he is not using the bandwidth, the provider can divert it to other subscribers,” he said.
