Bangladesh connects to second submarine cable, commercial use 'to take time'

Bangladesh has been connected to the second submarine cable at Kuakata Submarine Cable Landing Station.

With this, the country will get an additional bandwidth of more than 1,500 GB, according to Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL).

"The link was officially set up at a meeting of the SEA-ME-WE-5 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5) in Istanbul, Turkey on Tuesday," said BSCCL acting managing director Abdus Salam Khan.

The test transmission has started but it will be available commercially once the transmission link from Dhaka to Kuakata landing station is completed, he said.

Seventeen countries of South Asia, South-East Asia, Africa and Europe are getting connected to SEA-ME-WE-5 under one consortium.

Bangladesh signed the agreement with SEA-ME-WE-5 consortium to lay the second link in 2011.

BSCCL announced that a connection to the second submarine cable will be set up by 2016 but later stretched the time frame to the first quarter of 2017 because of ongoing inland cable construction work.

In 2005, Bangladesh got connected with the first submarine cable SEA-ME-WE-4 with a capacity of 200 Gbps (Gigabits per second).

Besides that, the country is connected to six alternate submarine cables (ITC or International Terrestrial Cable).

The rate of internet consumption of the country is more than 400 Gbps.

State-owned BSCCL provides 120 Gbps while the rest is imported from India.