The cabinet yesterday approved an agreement with India to export 10 gigabits per second bandwidth to northeastern states of India.
The three-year agreement will be signed between Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL).
Bangladesh will export the bandwidth by Tk 9.42 crore per year, Cabinet Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told reporters after a meeting.
He said the amount has been fixed through mutual discussion and understanding.
BSNL will purchase 10 Gbps initially and will increase the amount gradually, said Monwar Hossain, managing director of BSCCL, a state-owned entity.
As per the agreement, it could be extended up to 40 GBPS, Bhuiyan said.
Terming the agreement as 'win-win' situation for both Bangladesh and India, he said Bangladesh has additional GBPS and India needs it as it would be very expensive to bring the line from Mumbai.
A 22-kilometre optical fibre cable link from Brahmanbaria to Akhaura boarder will be developed in four months to transport the bandwidth, Hossain said.
“We will rent the link to be developed by a firm suggested by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.”
Bangladesh's submarine cable, whose lifetime will end in the next 12 years, has a bandwidth capacity of 200 Gbps, while it sells only 30 Gbps, Bhuiyan said.
Bangladesh would get another undersea cable of around 1,300 Gbps by December this year, he said.
“If we export 10 gbps now, we will have 160 gbps in our hand and we can utilise it at Union Parishad level,” he said.
“Bangladesh will earn revenue of Tk 9.42 crore per year and one fourth of the money will cover salary and wages of the officers and staffs of BSCCL.”
He said Bangladesh is currently connected with the South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) optical fibre submarine communications.
The country would be connected with SEA-ME-WE 5 which is a 20,000km submarine cable system connecting 17 countries with an ultimate system capacity of 24 Tbps, the cabinet secretary added.
The existing undersea cable, SEA-ME-WE-4, was built nine years ago at a cost of around Tk 245 crore.