National Internet Exchange to cut int’l charges for ISPs
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has recently sought telecom ministry approval for establishing National Internet Exchange to route the local internet traffic within the country. NIX, a consortium of two or more internet service providers, will be a passing point of internet traffic within the country. Two companies, BDIX and Novocom, submitted applications for establishing NIX which were forwarded to telecom ministry last week, BTRC officials said.
The initiative is a part of reducing the cost component of the internet service other than the bandwidth, they said.
‘The government in several phases reduced the internet bandwidth price but the end-users did not get the benefit as the operators claim that other cost component prices remain high,’ a BTRC official told New Age.
He also said it would reduce the use of international bandwidth and interconnection charges for the ISPs.
‘For example, presently when you send an email from Gulshan to Motijheel it passes through the international gateway and again returns to the country’s domain. When we will route this email through NIX the email will not require to go via international server which will reduce the cost for service providers,’ he said.
The BTRC had formulated the guideline for NIX in 2010 but failed to issue any licence as none showed interest.
An applicant must have to be certified by at least 10 licensed ISPs that they have peering connectivity with the applicant, BTRC officials said.
At least two licensed ISPs can apply for the NIX by forming a separate joint venture, they said.
The officials also said the license fee would be Tk 10,000 and the annual fee would be Tk 5,000.
-with New Age input
