Internet services to be disrupted for one hour early tomorrow

Internet connectivity in Bangladesh will face partial disruption for one hour early tomorrow as bandwidth supply from the second submarine cable will be disrupted for maintenance work.

Maintenance work will be performed on the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) submarine cable installed in Kuakata, and bandwidth supply from the cable will be disrupted from 3:00am to 4:00am, said Bangladesh Submarine Cables PLC (BSCPLC) in a press release.

However, bandwidth supply from the first submarine cable, SEA-ME-WE 4, will remain uninterrupted.

Total bandwidth usage now stands at over 5,200 Gbps and more than half of it -- about 2,700 Gbps -- comes through international terrestrial cable (ITC) licences that import bandwidth from India across land borders.

The rest -- about 2,500 Gbps -- is supplied by the BSCPLC, which connects the country with two submarine cables.

The BSCPLC supplies over 1,700 Gbps through the SEA-ME-WE 5, for which the connection was established in 2017.

Nearly 800 Gbps bandwidth is provided by the first undersea cable with which Bangladesh was connected to in 2006. It has a capacity of 850 Gbps.

The BSCPLC is spending $3.2 million to raise the capacity of its first undersea cable by nearly sixfold to 4,600 Gbps.

The BSCPLC is set to receive 13,200 Gbps from a third undersea cable, SEA-ME-WE 6, by 2025.

The use of internet bandwidth is expected to shoot up by 600 percent in seven years to 30,000 Gbps as the government plans to connect all education institutions to the internet as part of establishing a blended education system -- integrating online educational materials with physical, location-based classroom techniques.

In September 2022, private firms Summit Communications, CdNet Communications and Metacore Subcom Ltd obtained licences to establish, maintain and operate submarine cables in a development that broke the state monopoly in the wholesale bandwidth business.

The three have teamed up to connect the country with the first private submarine cable by 2025.

Submarine cables are crucial for internet bandwidth because they enable high-capacity data transfer between continents, supporting global communication, online services, and international connectivity essential for modern digital operations.