The Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) has backed the government’s decision to export unused 10 GBPS (gigabyte per second) bandwidth to India, saying it will be profitable for Bangladesh
Its Managing Director Md Monwar Hossain argued that Bangladesh would have unused bandwidth anyway after meeting demand for the next three years.
“Moreover, India is offering us better price,” he said at a media call on Sunday amid criticism of the government decision by various quarters.
He said the BSCCL supplied only 33GBPS out of its 200GBPS to the Bangladeshi market so far.
“By December 2016, Bangladesh’s demand may rise to 90GBPS. Still, it will have 110GBPS bandwidth unutilised,” he pointed out.
“We’re going to sell the surplus bandwidth to India at a higher price than in Bangladesh and it’ll earn us foreign currency,” the BSCCL managing director added.
The Cabinet on Apr 20 sanctioned an agreement to export unused bandwidth to India on a three-year contract, which, the Cabinet secretary said would earn Bangladesh $1.2 million every year.
India’s Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and BSCCL will sign the agreement.
Hossain said they would sell each megabyte to India for $10 or Tk 778, but the one megabyte is being sold at $8.03 or Tk 625 in Bangladesh.
He said Bangladesh could export as much as 40GBPS to India.
It will be exported through Brahmanbarhia’s Akhaurha from the Cox’s Bazar landing station of Bangladesh’s only submarine cable C-M-U-4.
Cabinet Secretary Muhammad Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan had said Bangladesh would get another 1,300GB bandwidth once linked with a second submarine cable in December next year under a consortium.
“There won’t be any crisis even with increased internet usage in future,” he had said.
($1=Tk 77.8)
