Internet disruptions to continue

Users have been experiencing slow internet since Wednesday as an Indian undersea submarine cable connection went out of order, the Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh said yesterday.

The slow speed of internet will continue for the time being as the association expects the connection to be re-established by January 20.

Bangladesh imports 280 Gbps out of the country's total bandwidth consumption of over 400 Gbps from India while the rest comes from state-owned Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd, said Md Emdadul Haque, general secretary of ISPAB.

The submarine cable of Tata Indicom Cable, which provides around half of the internet bandwidth that comes from India to Bangladesh, stopped working on January 20, he said.

Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company is connected with six Indian cables, and three of those went out of order in the last three weeks. On December 13, a submarine cable named 121 Media owned by Bharti Airtel went down due to a cut in fibre connection, which is yet to be restored.

Another submarine cable IMEWE—a high-capacity fibre optic cable linked with India and Europe via Middle East—is also down. The internet connection will return to normal as soon as the maintenance work of IMEWE and 121 Media is complete by January 20, Haque said.