Bangladesh to send first satellite by 2016

Finance Minister AMA Muhith today said the government had taken initiative to develop and launch the country’s first satellite “Bangabandhu Satellite-1” by 2016.

“The government has already selected an orbital slot and signed a contract for launching the first ever satellite into space,” Muhith said while placing his seventh consecutive budget in the parliament.

He proposed an allocation of Tk 3,587 crore for information and communication technology division and post and telecommunication division for the 2015-2016 fiscal.

Highlighting his government’s success in the process of country’s digitisation, Muhith said the country’s mobile phone users have risen to 12.47 crore by April, 2015.

The tele-density and internet density by this period have gone up 80.1 per cent 29.3 per cent respectively, he said.

A total of 4,547 union information centres have been set up to reduce the digital discrimination in the country, he said, citing examples of digitalisation in birth registration, agricultural information, health and education sectors through Access to Information (A2i) programme.

In agriculture sector, digital services have been provided to the farmers through video conference in some 245 information and communication centres.

Also health services were ensured in 64 civil surgeon offices and all upazila health complexes.  

More than 20,000 educational institutions were introduced with multimedia classrooms and laptops with internet connection so far. Also the government launched web portal “Shikkhok Batayon” to serve the teachers with digital content.

The minister said establishment of Kaliakoir High-tech Park in Gazipur district and Software Technology Park in Jessore is underway.

In addition, for the development of digital infrastructure regionally, land has been demarcated to establish Mohakhali IT Village in Dhaka, ChandradweepCloudchar in Barisal, Electronic City in Sylhet and Barind Silicon City in Rajshahi.

Simultaneously, activities for land selection are ongoing to establish high-tech and software technology parks in Khulna, Chittagong and Rangpur divisions. Besides, with a view to developing IT industry in all the districts, initiatives have been taken to establish IT villages in 12 districts in the first phase. Video conferencing system has been installed in 800 government offices so far.

To make internet Services available for all, 11 thousand km of optical fiber cableline is being laid in 1,006 unions of all the districts.

Apart from this, a project has been undertaken to establish broadband network to provide broadband internet services to the entire country.

The government planned to increase the bandwidth capacity from 200 Gbps to 1, 300 Gbps soon by connecting the country with the second submarine cable; and establish 8,500 Post e-Centres by June 2017, Muhith said in his budget speech.