This delay, now totalling six months, is benefiting none but the illegal Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) operators who are earning an estimated Tk 100 crore a month. These VoIP operators, who include some influential people of the 'alternative powerhouse' of the ruling BNP, are being helped by a section of unscrupulous officials and some mobile phone companies. A large chunk of this black money is also being siphoned abroad.

A highly placed source in Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) said the high-tech SEA-ME-WE4 (South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4) submarine cable, now connected to the newly built optical fibre line between Cox's Bazar and Chittagong, is currently undergoing tests.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia may inaugurate it on May 21 but the schedule has not been finalised. She was earlier scheduled to inaugurate it on April 27.

Telecom industry experts say the BTTB has not actually taken any preparation to upgrade its cable infrastructure in the cities to deliver the speed of the submarine cable at the consumer level.

Therefore, when the system is launched later this month, consumers will not enjoy high speed internet unless the BTTB awards licences to private cable companies to lay high-speed cable in the cities. "The private companies now have the capacity. But the BTTB is not even thinking of the upcoming situation," noted an official.

Then again, the government is at loggerheads with the Internet Service Providers (ISPs). It says licence for VoIP will be given after creating a common platform in four areas of Bangladesh under the BTTB through which the internet phone calls will be channelised. The four areas are Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet and Bogra. Such a common platform will not start operation before July-August even if the authorities try their best.

The ISPs want point-to-point operation and argue that such a provision will practically restrict the ISPs, while it will not restrict point-to-point connection of private companies to the information superhighway. In other words, illegal operators in the guise of private companies will continue to enjoy unhindered VoIP operation while legal and genuine ISPs will have limited access.

Built by a consortium of 16 members of different countries, the cable is already bringing cash for most of the partners from October last year when its installation was complete. For Bangladesh, however, the cash could not start flowing due to lack of Cox's Bazar-Chittagong optical fibre line. The BTTB messed up the tender for this line once, causing the delay.

"We are already using the submarine cable for BTTB's international calls from December," said a BTTB official. "But we have not started using Cox's Bazar-Chittagong optical fibre line, therefore the benefit is limited to only smooth connections." The BTTB did not however reduce its call charge, which was expected as a benefit of using this cable.

A high official of the BTTB said that not all consortium members are reaping the benefits of the cable. "We know Egypt and Pakistan have not started using the cable," he said.

He pointed out that while there were huge business opportunities awaiting the BTTB, it is not yet clear how fast the state-owned telecom company will get the return from its $35 million investment on the submarine cable alone.

"We have given 50,000 Minimum Investment Unit (MIU) kilometres to the consortium for sale to the international telecom market. Plus we estimate that we will need maximum 20 percent of the capacity of the cable. We can lease out or sell the rest ourselves," he added.

The BTTB has been allocated 7,49,925 MIU kilometres on the submarine cable system. The MIU km is calculated on the basis of cost and return from investment per kilometre of the cable. The MIU km is being sold at $50 to 60 each at the international telecom market.

The BTTB recently lost the rare opportunity of nearly doubling the MIU allocation for a nominal $4 million investment to upgrade the submarine cable. Industry operators term this a foolish act.

The industry operators are more concerned at the BTTB's snail pace in developing any business plan to transform this very first terrestrial high-speed international telecom facility into a national economic growth engine.

"Two issues make BTTB's undersea connectivity vulnerable to disruption. SEA-ME-WE4 is the only submarine cable the country has acquired. If it gets snapped due to careless anchoring or fishing in Cox's Bazar coast, the entire country becomes isolated until the cable gets repaired, which takes a couple of weeks or so. Neither the BTTB nor the government has taken any measure to prohibit anchoring or fishing along the cable's route in the Bay of Bengal," said an industry operator.

The BTTB's Cox's Bazar to Dhaka via Chittagong optical fibre transmission link is more susceptible to prolonged and frequent shutdown due to the damages being caused by periodic repair of the highway. Such occurrences will also repeatedly snap the country's access to submarine cable. The BTTB generally takes a couple of days to repair such damage.

Such erratic shutdown of the BTTB's access to SEA-ME-WE4 submarine cable will be the major obstacle for the call centre business. Business process outsource (BPO) will be equally discouraged by the unreliable state of the BTTB's lifeline to SEA-ME-WE4 submarine cable network.

The BTTB is the only government body, instead of a corporate entity, in the 16-country SEA-ME-WE4 consortium. It has significantly weakened the position of Bangladesh within the consortium as well as in the regional and international bandwidth market.

The government has been sitting on the BTTB's submarine cable bandwidth prices for more than a month. Therefore, the state-owned telecom monopoly has been unable to initiate any bandwidth sales without the government's approval.

Sources fear this bottleneck has been hindering the SEA-ME-WE4 submarine cable offers (a) international private leased circuit (IPLC) and (b) Internet connectivity to Bangladesh. The BTTB used to provide few IPLC until the private VSAT providers emerged in 2000. It also has no wholesale client for internet access as the private sector has been solely serving this market. Therefore, the BTTB lacks institutional readiness to sell and market its services using the SEA-ME-WE4 submarine cable network. As a result, the country's ICT sector will not be able to reap the submarine cable's benefit. The government will also be unable to attract the existing VSAT users toward SEA-ME-WE4.

The BTTB, unlike the other members SEA-ME-WE4 consortium, is unable to establish its permanent pool of experts to run the submarine cable business. Because its human resource is composed of government officers and employees, they get transferred from one department to another on a regular basis. It has been hindering establishment of in-house expertise in various disciplines of telecom operations and now the submarine cable will be the latest victim of such bureaucratic musical chair.

The BTTB is unable to independently determine the tariff of any of its services. It has to seek the finance ministry's approval, through the telecoms ministry, followed by getting final nod from the BTRC. This process takes months to get completed. On the contrary, the prices of IPLC and internet bandwidth vary time-to-time. Therefore, BTTB will not be able to respond with revised pricing in the highly dynamic international telecom connectivity market.

Price of any connectivity depends on the availability of the link. The VSAT providers offer more than 98 percent availability of their links. BTTB, on the contrary, does not even recognise such a fundamental parameter of service provisioning.

"Considering these odds, splitting the submarine cable business, like Teletalk, is the best option for the government. But unlike Teletalk, the submarine cable's management should be contracted to a competent operator," said a telecom expert.

The SEA-ME-WE 4 project is the fourth project in the SEA-ME-WE series. On March 27 in 2004, a consortium of 16 international telecommunications companies signed construction and maintenance agreements for the new optical fibre submarine cable system linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian Sub-continent and Middle East with Terminal Stations in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France. The contract is being awarded jointly to Alcatel Submarine Networks, France and Fujitsu Ltd, Japan and the estimated project cost is about $ 500 million.

Besides, the submarine cable's Bangladesh segment's owner, the BTTB, also an Internet Service Provider, will enjoy free access to the submarine cable while the private sector ISPs are feared to be marginalised by payment provisions for the same facility.