The Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd (BTCL) is going to implement a new project to replace about 180,000 land phones, including about 70,000 broadband lines, in Dhaka with a new technology, officials said. The new project, Telecommunication Network Development, will be implemented in six telephone exchanges here. The project will also include IGW, intelligent network, about 40,000 CDMA WLL lines, and Network Operation Centre, ringing in a great stride in the country’s telecom sector. The project will help the BTCL to greatly reduce illegal VOIP calls, the officials added.
The project also envisages a separate Lot (Lot-B), whereby BTCL would install 1,502-km of optical fibres in different places in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country, with a view to increasing the bandwidth capacity of Internet, the officials said.
The Tk. 622 crore project is being implemented with assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
A BTCL official said the project comprises two unique components – a switching equipment related (Lot-A) and national transmission backbone related (Lot-B).
An agreement was signed between the Bangladesh government and the erstwhile JBIC (at present JICA) in this regard in 2006 and implementation began in 2010. The project is scheduled to be completed by June 2015, he added.
The official, however, said ertain quarters with vested interests are conspiring to obstruct implementation of the Lot-A component without any valid reason.
He said in accordance with JICA guideline, applications for pre-qualification for Lot-A and Lot-B were sought in 2011. Five companies had submitted tenders for Lot-B and three of them were rejected after the evaluation process.
One of these companies, Nortel Networks Netas Telekommunikayson AS Turkey, had filed a complaint on Lot-B to CPTU’s review panel, Following this, CPTU’s Review Panel-2 had ordered the BTCL to include the company in the PQ system, he added.
Later, the BTCL had filed a writ petition in the High Court, but the court rejected the petition. The BTCL then submitted a civil petition for leave to appeal in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. The apex court had dismissed the BTCL’s petition and upheld the HC’s verdict
-With The Independent input
