The Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) says Internet services remain suspended from 12:30pm due to problems in the BTTB's router and Synchronous Transport Module (STM). The association in a press release claimed that except for three, no Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were able to provide Internet services.

It added that the ISPs were temporarily providing services through very small aperture terminals (VSAT), a two-way satellite ground station with a dish antenna.

According to a competent source in the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), out of its 70 ISP clients, 40 percent were not getting proper services because of problems in a certain set of routers.

The other ISPs were getting proper services as there is no technical problem, he said. Other corporate clients were also getting steady services.

The ISPs have a total demand of 577 megabyte per second (mbps).

Four BTTB experts were working to restore the network at the BTTB Moghbazar Submarine Cable Gateway and to find out why the network was affected. "For some unknown reasons, some of the routers are overloaded," said the source.

"The links are up, but there is data-packet loss. As a result, an ISP that has a demand of 12mbps is perhaps getting 4 to 5mbps," said the source.

The ISPAB claimed that BTTB was giving "special treatment" to three ISPs--including the Grameenphone--to continue uninterrupted Internet services. ISPAB protested this "special treatment".

The association pointed out that the Moghbazar gateway has only three engineers and even though the Internet service usage from there is heavy, there is no proper system of getting client services.

"To deal with any problem, one has to directly contact the engineers or the divisional engineers. This is not desirable. The ISP association has been demanding for long to increase the manpower at the gateway but there were no effective initiative," it said.

A BTTB high official refuted the ISPAB's allegation that three clients--including the Grameenphone--were getting special treatment.

"Sixty percent of the ISPs are unaffected--not just three ISPs. May be these 40 percent ISPs are big and serving a great number of users. They have to understand that the problem lies with equipment that are dedicated to these 40 percent ISPs," he said, adding, "We cannot shut down service to Grameenphone to provide service to affected ISPs. That's unfair."

He said the problems of each ISP were being resolved one by one from yesterday afternoon.

"We hope that all network related problems will be resolved within this month," he said.

The BTTB is currently installing new routers and switches that would increase its present processing capacity by 200 times. The project will be completed within this month.

The BTTB's Internet backbone service is often under-performing because of bad network. "The old equipment had their limitations. Right now we are configuring our new network equipment and we are in a transitional phase," the official added.