Mobile internet may be restored by tomorrow

Government officials and mobile network operators will meet today to discuss restoring mobile internet, which has been switched off by the government for almost 10 days now.

"After discussing with the operators, we are trying to reopen the mobile 4G network by tomorrow [Sunday] or the day after," said Zunaid Ahmed Palak, the state minister for telecom and ICT, yesterday.

The government can resume mobile internet within hours if it wants, according to industry insiders who spoke to The Daily Star on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The telecom sector has suffered physical damage amounting to Tk 500 crore and an additional Tk 500 crore in lost revenue due to the ongoing unrest, Palak said.

He was delivering a speech during the inauguration of the 'Trees for Peace' programme, in which 100,000 tree saplings will be planted to celebrate the birthday of Sajeeb Wazed, information and communication technology affairs adviser to the Prime Minister.

"The government hasn't shut down the internet. The shutdown was due to the optical fibre cable connecting Dhaka-Chattogram being torched by miscreants and fire that made the data centres non-operational," he added.

People with knowledge of the matter said the outage was ordered by the government.

The Daily Star has visited the data centres in question and found no sign of damage to the building that housed them.

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Officials of the data centres also confirmed that there was no fire in the building. However, the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) building was torched and that fire partially damaged some overhead cables connected to the data centres located nearby buildings.

On July 17, the government shut down mobile internet. Palak said it was "in light of the current crisis in the country and to stop the spread of fake news on social media."

The next day, the DDM building was torched.

Around 8:00pm, officials of the Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh said the fire might have cut 30-40 percent of the bandwidth supply, leaving some users disconnected and many with slow internet.

However, officials of internet service providers said this would disrupt partial internet traffic. An hour later, the entire Bangladesh was without internet.

The government reopened broadband internet in selected areas on July 23 and restored connections on a trial basis nationwide the next day.