Submarine cable maintenance near Singapore may lead to internet disruption from Sunday

Internet speed in Bangladesh may slow down for five days as maintenance work is being conducted on the submarine cable near Singapore, says state-run Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd (BTCL).

The internet speed in Bangladesh may slow from 12:00am Sunday Oct 23 to 2pm Thursday Oct 27, BTCL Director (Public Relations and Publications) Mir Md Morshed told bdnews24.com.
 
BLTC has made several steps to ensure users will have Internet access during that period, said Morshed.
 
“We hope our users will not have too much trouble, but Internet speed may be slightly slower,” he said.
 

A ‘repeater’ will be replaced during maintenance work scheduled on Sunday, said a senior official at Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL).

“There may be Internet traffic outage for about three hours after midnight on Sunday,” he said “And there may also be a three-hour outage on the final day of maintenance work.”

But steps have been taken to minimise the disruption, he said.

“Users may experience slowing down of speed,” he said.

Prior to 2012 Bangladesh solely relied on a single submarine cable (SEA-ME-WE 4) for telecommunications.

Since October 2012 International Terrestrial Cable (ITC) operators have worked to provide an alternative to the submarine cable.

ITC operators are connected to different Indian telecommunications companies through terrestrial optical fibre lines.

They are able to provide Bangladesh connection to international telecommunications networks when the submarine cable line is down.

Six ITC operators have been purchasing bandwidth from India and distributing it in Bangladesh for the past four years.

The six companies are currently providing over 160 gbps (gigabytes per second) to Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is to receive a second submarine cable connection - SEA-ME-WE 5 – in December.

The government expects the new cable to provide over to 1300 gbps of bandwidth.