Work on telecoms link between India and Bangladesh to begin this week

New Delhi will start putting into operation this week an agreement on telecommunication links between India and Bangladesh within a month of its signing.

India’s Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will commission the work sometime this week to link Agartala in Tripura border with International Gateway for Internet Service (IGIS) at Cox's Bazar.
 
“This will improve the internet connectivity of the landlocked north-eastern states of India,” said a senior official at the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), India’s state-owned telecom service provider.
 
To improve the internet connectivity in north-eastern region, an agreement between the BSNL and Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL) was signed last month.
 
Anupam Shrivastava, CMD BSNL and Md Monwar Hossain, MD BSCCL, had signed the agreement for the provision of International Bandwidth for Internet from Cox’s Bazar to Agartala.
 
“Connectivity in northeast region of India is currently unstable mainly due to large-scale road widening work resulting in poor internet service quality in the region.
 
“On the initiative of Government of India, the BSNL explored the possibility of leasing bandwidth from the BSCCL for providing connectivity to the NE region through the territory of Bangladesh to improve internet and telecom services in the region,” the government official said.
 
The BSCCL will provide the International Port (IP) transit service from Cox's Bazar Cable Landing Station.
 
The terrestrial route in Bangladesh will be Cox's Bazar-Chittagong-Comilla- Brahmanbarhia-Akhaurha for primary link and Cox's Bazar-Chitagong-Comilla-Dhaka-Narsinghdi-Bhairab-Akhaurha will be the secondary link.

Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd (BTCL) has to lay nearly 30-kilometre Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) from Brahmanbarhia to Akhaurha.

BSNL will set up International Long Distance (ILD) Gateway at Agartala along with equipment.

Initial requirement of the BSNL will be 10GBPS IP transit and IP port at Akhaurha ICP. This endeavour of BSNL will improve the internet connectivity for the people of the region.

The official also said that the Indian government would spend about Rs 190 million to create the infrastructure, including the laying of the OFC to avail the 10G bandwidth from BSCCL.