Bandwidth prices nearly halved

Muhammad Zahidul Islam

Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd has decided to slash the wholesale prices of internet bandwidth by up to 43 percent to discourage imports from India and also dispose of its huge amount of unused bandwidth.
International gateway operators will mostly benefit from the price cut.
Currently, BSCCL is using only 33 gigabits per second of internet bandwidth out of its capacity of 200 Gbps.
The country's total internet bandwidth consumption is around 120 Gbps, and six international territorial cable companies meet the demand through imports from India as it is cheaper in the neighbouring country.
In light of this, the state company has now fixed Tk 558 for each megabit per second (Mbps) of bandwidth for a bundle of 20 gigabits, down from Tk 980 earlier.
The new price will be effective for international gateway operators from August 1, said Monowar Hossain, managing director of BSCCL.
For internet service providers, however, each Mbps will cost Tk 720 and they will have to buy a minimum of 5 Gbps.

Once implemented, this will be the second price cut in three months.
“We need to rethink about the price to keep our business secured,” said Hossain, who is hopeful of capturing a major share of the country's bandwidth business.
The government also has plans to export 10 Gbps of bandwidth to the northeastern states of India.
Bangladesh was connected to SEA-ME-WE-4 in 2006 at a cost of $63 million. BSCCL recouped the investment three years ago.

30 ISP licences cancelled

Star Business Report

The telecom regulator yesterday cancelled licences of 30 internet service providers after they failed to pay fees for renewal in time.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission directed the ISPs to pay their dues to the commission in 10 days or be punished under the Telecommunication Act 2001.
These licenses were issued between June 2008 and March 2010, the regulator said in a notice.
The ISPs have clearly violated the law by continuing to operate without valid licences, according to the notice.
Earlier on June 29, BTRC warned 17 VSAT licence holders, including some foreign embassies in Dhaka, for not renewing their licenses in time. 

Sustainable development conference kicks off in Ethiopia today

Diplomatic Correspondent

A new and stronger global partnership for sustainable development will be brought to light at the third international conference on financing for development (FFD) beginning today in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
“The conference will set a framework for financing sustainable development over the next 15 years,” said Wu Hongbo, conference secretary-general and United Nations under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs.
“The outcome will be a comprehensive package to aid sustainable development goals to be adopted in September. The framework will be ambitious and universally inclusive,” he said ahead of the four-day conference.
“No-one should be left behind.”
The new agenda will advance sustainable development in all countries, including Bangladesh, a foreign ministry official said.
The outcome of the conference will be crucial for building momentum toward agreement on an ambitious post-2015 development agenda at a summit in New York in September and the conclusion of a comprehensive and universal new climate agreement in Paris in December.
Thirty heads of state and government along with more than 110 ministers from finance, foreign affairs and development cooperation will attend the conference which will end on July 16.

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State Minister for Finance Abdul Mannan is leading the Bangladesh delegation which will include the finance secretary, NBR chairman and senior officials of ERD and foreign ministry.
In addition, about 1,000 representatives from civil society and the business sector are expected to be in Addis Ababa for the conference.
“The conference is all about implementation of ambitious sustainable development goals. It is expected to provide means of implementation,” Alexander Trepelkov, a high official at the UN headquarters, told Bangladeshi reporters, via video conferencing recently.
“The year 2015 is a 'pivotal' year for fostering sustainable development, '' said Trepelkov, director of the financing for development office at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
“The agenda contains 17 goals,” he said adding that there are three aspects of implementation -- social, economic and environmental that would require enormous financial resources and other means of implementation.
“The international community is committing itself to help countries meet those challenges and international public finance is the most important for LDCs,” Trepelkov said.