Abu Saeed Khan, the country's leading telecom policy expert, passed away at 8:35 am today at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH). He was 62. 

Khan was diagnosed with lung cancer around a year ago. His son, Taufik Mahmood Don, told The Daily Star that Khan was admitted to CMH on March 30 as his condition worsened. 

The first funeral prayer will be held at the CMH mosque in the capital after Zuhr prayers. He will be buried next to his wife's grave after a second funeral prayer in Tangail.

Khan held the position of senior policy fellow at LIRNEasia, a think-tank based in Colombo. From August 2010 to July 2012, he served as the secretary general of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh. Before that, he was a strategy analyst at Ericsson's Southeast Asian head office in Malaysia until June 2010.

In his earlier roles, he was the technology editor for bdnews24.com and a research analyst at EMC World Cellular Database (now owned by Informa), where he covered the mobile markets of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal.

As a journalist, Khan influenced various policies related to the telecom sector of Bangladesh. His reports, which revealed anomalies, alerted the authorities and led to interventions that saved public funds in telecom procurements.

In 2002, Khan persuaded the government to join the SEA-ME-WE4 consortium, linking the country with its first submarine cable. In 2003, he also convinced the government to establish a Class 4 switch, known as ATOB Tandem, which significantly alleviated the mobile operators' interconnection issues with the then state-owned monopoly.