Internet speed curbs during SSC exams to stop leak

ISPs and mobile operators have been instructed to slow down internet speed as the government desperately attempts to plug leaks of SSC exams questions.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 11 Feb 2018, 03:10 PM
Updated : 11 Feb 2018, 06:33 PM

The telecoms regulators have ordered limiting the speed to 25Kbps from two hours before tests until half an hour after exams start.

As a trial run, the internet was slowed down for half an hour from 10pm on Sunday.

“All ISPs, mobile phone and WiMax operators have been ordered to follow it for the next 10 days,” ISPAB President MA Hakim told bdnews24.com.

Date

Time

Feb 12

8am to 10:30am

Feb 13

8am to 10:30am

Feb 15

8am to 10:30am

Feb 17

8am to 10:30am

Feb 18

8am to 10:30am and 12pm to 2:30pm

Feb 19

8am to 10:30am

Feb 20

8am to 10:30am

Feb 22

8am to 10:30am

On Sunday, the government also blocked 300 mobile phone connections, which had been used to circulate leaked questions, said the chief of an education ministry panel formed over question leak.

Police have launched raids to detain the owners of the mobile phone connections, said Md Alamgir, Secretary to the ministry’s Technical and Madrasa Education Division.

Despite adopting a series of measures, the government has failed to plug question leaks in public examinations.

Following leaks of question papers of eighth and fifth graders last year, the education ministry made it mandatory for students to enter the SSC exam centres half an hour before the tests begin.

Mobile phones or any other electronic devices have been banned from the centres.

Only the centre secretary is allowed to use a phone with no camera.

The sealed envelopes containing the questions have to be opened 30 minutes before the test.

But, leaked questions are still appearing on the social media, especially on Facebook, ahead of the exams.

Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid had said before the exams they were mulling to shutdown Facebook for a limited time in an effort to stop the menace.

On Sunday, the BTRC instructed mobile operators to shut data services for an hour from 9am.

But the outage took effect from 9:30am and by then questions for the ICT tests were leaked on the social media.

bdnews24.com reached to the Dhaka Education Board immediately after leaked questions surfaced on the internet.

“Today we were a bit late in shutting down the internet. There is a meeting at the ministry today. We will get to know the steps for the coming exams after that,” said Exam Controller Tapan Kumar Sarkar.

The directive to limit internet speed by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission or BTRC came in the evening.

According to the BTRC, the number of internet users in Bangladesh stood over 80 million as of December and almost 75 million of them access it from mobile phones.

A clampdown on the internet, however, is not new in Bangladesh.

On Nov 18, 2015, millions of users were shut out of the web for about 90 minutes, which the government said was to stop militants from communicating with each using internet-based messaging apps.

Following that brief outage, access to Facebook and instant messaging applications Messenger, Viber and WhatsApp had been blocked for 22 days.

But the ban went for a toss as many accessed these platforms using Virtual Private Networks or VPN to bypass the censorship.

The move came in the wake terror attacks, when two foreigners were targeted.

The latest move to stop question leak have drawn flak as well.

Online activist Imran H Sarker says he doubts those who had decided the move have the “slightest idea about the internet.”

“Question paper does not get leaked on the internet. It’s used to circulate the leaked papers. The priority is to stop that from happening,” he told bdnews24.com.

According to him, the latest measure will not be effective.

Referring to recent arrests over leaks, Sarker, the convener of Blogger and Online Activist Network, however, said it was a good sign.

“But we do not see any government initiatives to track down who are behind these leaks.”