Slow internet speed to continue in Bangladesh Saturday for submarine cable repairs

Bangladesh may continue experiencing slow internet speed on Saturday as repairs on the first submarine cable of the country have not finished.

"The work has not ended yet. We hope the situation will get back to normal by tomorrow (Saturday) night," Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited or BSCCL Managing Director Mashiur Rahman told bdnews24.com on Friday.

He added the repairs could not be completed because of a delay in the start of the work.

Earlier, State Minister for Telecommunications Tarana Halim said the speed may slow down from Tuesday to Thursday due to the restoration work.

The problem will be on a limited scale as Bangladesh will use bandwidth from its second submarine cable and six international terrestrial cable connections, she had said.

The repairs will involve the replacement of repeaters and could slow internet speed, a top BSCCL official had said earlier.

This is the first time renovation work is being done on the cable, the official said.

Bangladesh was connected to the SEA-ME-WE-4 in 2005, which provided 250 gigabits per second of bandwidth. It is also connected to six terrestrial cables.

The country's second submarine cable landing station was inaugurated in Patuakhali on Sept 10 this year.

Bangladesh will get approximately 1,500 Gigabytes per second of speed from this landing station’s connection to the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe international consortium’s submarine cable, SEA-ME-WE-5.

The national demand for internet bandwidth is above 400Gbps. Thus far 120Gbps come through the BSSL. The remaining 280Gbps is imported from India.