As data demand increases across the world, there’s more pressure to ensure that telecoms infrastructure is able to deal with it – as shown by recent announcements involving fibre and submarine cables in Bangladesh.
The Daily Star reports that the Bangladesh Railway has leased out its spare optical fibre cables to five telecom and internet service providers for five years. This is also beneficial to Bangladesh Railway of course. It will earn Tk177.81 crore (about $US18.7 million) during the five-year lease period.
There is one problem, however: two beneficiaries, operators Robi and Banglalink, are apparently not permitted to import or install dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) equipment, a bar on operators introduced in 2018. However, the railway has assured them that it will install DWDM on their behalf.
Meanwhile, the government, though the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), is planning to award licences to three private firms to establish, maintain and operate submarine cables as it looks to ramp up the supply of bandwidth.
Until now the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL), a state-owned company, was the sole entity permitted to connect the country with the rest of the world through undersea cables.
It seems a massive, and partly pandemic-related, surge in bandwidth consumption has inspired these moves. Projections show that demand is likely to reach as high as 34,000 Gbps by 2025, as the need for bandwidth gets more acute.
