The government will reduce internet bandwidth price by 62.5 percent to Tk 3,000 per Megabits per second (Mbps) within its tenure, the chairman of
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission said yesterday.
People are not getting the benefit of reduced bandwidth price as there are other issues related to infrastructures expenses, Sunil Kanti Bose said.
Internet service providers (ISPs) spend only 8 percent of their total costs on bandwidth purchase, he said. So other costs of the ISPs should be reduced too, Bose added.
Bose spoke at a roundtable on “Turning the future: mobile services and its impact on health and development sectors in Bangladesh” at The Daily Star Centre in the capital.
The Daily Star along with Ethics Advanced Technology, an IT firm, organised the programme.
The backhaul price of internet has already been reduced substantially and will be reduced further, he said.
In August last year, the government reduced bandwidth price to Tk 8,000 per Mbps from Tk 10,000 per Mbps.
In 2007, a caretaker government reduced bandwidth price to Tk 27,000 per Mbps from Tk 75,000 per Mbps.
It is not possible to provide wired internet connections to every house in the country, he said. So the government now plans to provide internet through wireless and optical fibre cable lines, Bose said.
“We have planned to develop the telecommunication infrastructure in the country.”
He said the government has provided six licences for international terrestrial cables (ITC), and some of the ITC companies have already started their services.
Work is going on to set up a satellite in Bangladesh’s orbit, he said.
-With The Daily Star input
