A long pending project of Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd to upgrade and modernise its countrywide network finally got the nod yesterday but with the condition that its cost has to be slashed by about Tk 700 crore.

The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council also formed a committee, headed by Telecom Secretary Shyam Sunder Sikder, to bargain with the supplier to bring down the price from the estimate of Tk 2,573.40 crore, Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal told reporters after the meeting.

Of the amount, the government would provide Tk 756.12 crore from the national exchequer and the remaining Tk 1,817.28 crore would come as project assistance from China.

With the view to competing with mobile operators and making its service more modern, the BTCL took up the project in 2014.

Ecnec had approved the project then at an estimated cost of Tk 1,861.15 crore but the deal was not signed after the political changeover in China, according to the project documents.

The project was placed again, after much debate over the higher estimated costs over the last few years.

Once the project is complete in June 2020, BTCL will be able to offer low-cost and high-speed internet connectivity through land phones.

Earlier, the cabinet committee on economic affairs awarded a Chinese joint venture -- a consortium of ZTE Holding Company Ltd and ZTE Corporation -- for implementing the project.

Under the project, three internet protocol multimedia sub-system platforms with the capacity of 16 lakh connections would be installed, while the copper cables would be replaced by 2,367 km of fibre optic cable.

Some 793 km of new copper cable would also be installed from transmission.

The platforms will be established in Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna, from which telecom services will be made available in all divisions, districts and upazilas.

Besides, eight backbone equipment with each having the capacity of 100 gbps, six crore routers for IP network, 114 other routers, 143 access switches and 139 other switches would be procured for the project.

Moreover, a central monitoring system would also be installed for 24-hour telephone connection, network operation and maintenance. Video call, video conferencing and different types of modern services based on broadband internet can be provided through land phones, according to a report from the telecom division.

At present, customers enjoy the services through mobile phones. The existing BTCL network can currently offer only the voice service, with its video and data service quality falling way short of modern standards.

The government is now proceeding with the project to comply with the vision 2021, said an official of the telecom division.

Besides, BTCL is lagging far behind the private telephone operators and its revenue is fast shrinking. "It is impossible for BTCL to survive only by providing traditional services through fixed phone."

Providing high-speed data service for mobile operators is costly, but a fixed phone operator like BTCL can do so at lower costs through the optical fibre network, he said.