Bangladesh climbs three spots on Huawei's Global Connectivity Index

Bangladesh has moved three spots up in an index presented by Chinese tech giant Huawei which rates the ICT infrastructure in 79 countries around the world.

The South Asian nation improved its ranking from 76th last year to 73rd in the Global Connectivity Index 2019.

According to the report, Bangladesh has seen significant growth in smartphone demand and mobile broadband subscriptions over the years.

User experience has also improved with more affordable mobile and fixed broadband, better cybersecurity, and cloud services.

However, the report notes that slow progress has been made in overall ICT investment in the country, which is essential to build capacity.

The index identifies several inflection points in a country such as ICT laws, telecom investment, cloud investment, 4G connections, ICT investment and international internet bandwidth, where rising GCI scores can potentially trigger higher economic growth.

Bangladesh currently sits three places above Pakistan (76th) and seven places below India (65th) in the GCI rankings.

It is among four countries that stand out for their impressive improvement in GCI scores in the four years since the rankings started, the report said. 

Since 2015, mobile subscription penetration jumped from 5 percent to 41 percent and smartphone penetration from 7 percent to 34 percent.

The nation has witnessed tremendous growth in its cloud transformation services while E-government services have also grown thanks to the government's support for public-private dialogue and collaboration and digitalisation, according to the report.

"Working with Huawei and Robi, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology has demonstrated 5G technology for the first time in Bangladesh."

"On top of 5G testing, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has also issued a directive allowing Internet of Things (IoT) for smart buildings, automation industries, and other city services," it added.

According to Huawei, the new directive will help to create a smart city where technology connects machine to machine, gives city dwellers a better experience, and improves the efficiency of technology.