ICT infrastructure shaping up in sync with economic boom

The local telecom and ICT industry went through a silent revolution over the past 10 years, when the country's fibre optic cable network expanded exponentially to cater to the spiralling demand for data and internet.

In 2009, Bangladesh only had 16,000 kilometres of fibre network, which grew nearly 7 times bigger to cross 110,000 kilometres in 2020.

By the period, bandwidth or internet usage also increased by over 70 times to hit 2.1 Terabits per second (Tbps) or 2,100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) in 2020 from only 30 Gbps in 2009.

The credit for such phenomenal growth especially goes to the National Telecommunication Transmission Network (NTTN) operators.

Of the 110,000 kilometres of fibre network, the private NTTN licence holders built over 90,000 kilometres, playing a key role in building Digital Bangladesh.

Md Arif Al Islam, managing director and CEO of Summit Communications, the country's largest NTTN operator, made these comments during an interview with The Daily Star.

"The NTTNs not only helped in expanding the mobile network in Bangladesh but also strengthened the infrastructure to cut the cost of bandwidth usage by nearly 98 per cent," he said.

In 2009, each Mbps bandwidth was sold at Tk 13,500-15,000, which has currently come down to Tk 150-200 now and it goes down further to Tk 50 per Mbps for larger volumes.

Of the 2.1 Tbps internet bandwidth, the country's 10 crore mobile internet users consume only 40 per cent while the rest 60 per cent is used by the existing 80,000 to 90,000 broadband connections served by ISPs.

People reachability may be higher in mobile internet but the fixed broadband customers served by ISPs are actually driving the internet data volume growth.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has compelled more people to start using broadband connections thanks to the emergence of the culture of home office and online classes.

The change in people's internet usage pattern, which was supposed to take place in next few years, is taking place now because of the Covid-19 outbreak.

For the growth the telecom sector has so far achieved, it can be said the mobile operators have started the process and infrastructure operators like Summit fast-tracked the pace of this growth.

"People don't know about us because we [NTTN operators] always remain in the background as the backbone of the communication industry, depending on which the country has become a global outsourcing hub now."

The general masses could not understand how Summit Communications can establish a nearly 50,000km fibre optic cable network when the distance between two opposite ends of Bangladesh, from Teknaf to Tetulia, is only 900km.

The network is actually established following a ring concept. Any specific location's network resilience is raised and the downtime reduced if the area's fibre connections complete a ring.

That is why the network coverage area becomes so big since it comprises larger rings at divisional and district levels and smaller rings at upazila and union levels.

Summit Communications has grown from strength to strength with time since the reception of its NTTN licence in 2009.

The company currently delivers over 740 Gbps internet bandwidth, having 35 per cent share of the internet market.

The company has so far connected over 4,200 out of the country's 34,000 base transceiver stations (BTS). It connects only around 12 per cent of the total BTSs, it targets to connect 50-70 per cent of them in future.

Earlier, the BTSs used to generate 20-30 Mbps traffic, which mobile operators used to transfer from one BTS to the central hub wirelessly.

But now the bandwidth usage in 4G BTS is hitting as high as 200-500 Mbps, making its transmission too heavy to carry wirelessly, which makes fibre connectivity a necessity and creates an opportunity for Summit.

Summit is serving government offices at the upazila level by providing 3,650 connections at a very subsidised rate under the government's Info-Sarker Phase II project.

It is also the implementing partner of the government's Info-Sarker Phase III project, under which connections from upazilas to 1,293 unions are being established. Of these, over 1,100 unions are already connected.

Through the Info Sarkar 3 network, around 20,000 Union Digital Centres of the government will get high-capacity broadband.

Summit also established the country's first NTTN optical fibre transmission network coverage in the southern hill tract districts.

The company is also providing a seamless transmission network now following global standards.

Every service provider and mobile operator pays a penalty in the form of liquidated damage (LD) if it fails to maintain the uninterrupted service level agreement (SLA) of 99.9 per cent uptime.

"I take pride to say that Grameenphone, being our biggest client, could not cut any LD at all in the last 30 months, as we maintained the SLA throughout the months and years consistently."

Summit Communications has so far invested over Tk 1,500 crore in the business and now plans to double its individual fibre optic cable network to 100,000 km.

"With the recent addition of the tower licence, we are the only company at present that is capable of providing the full end to end value chain of telecom infrastructure, i.e., fibre optic, tower and gateway services."

If any new operator wants to start operation in Bangladesh, it can do it just by setting up its radio equipment on Summit's transmission and tower network after purchasing a telecom licence from the government.

For a new mobile operator, if it needs an investment of around $2 billion to start business here, it can bring down the spending at least by half and become a nationwide operator from day one if it subscribes to the end-to-end services provided by Summit Communications.

However, the journey of Summit Communications was not smooth at all. It entered the industry at a time when the sector had already matured.

"Our clients were our competitors when we started operations in 2010."

The main clients of Summit already had nationwide fibre optic networks such as Grameenphone, which had the biggest network of 6,500km at the time, followed by Citycell with 1,800km and Aktel 1,200km.

Around 25 per cent of Citycell's revenue used to come from the transmission business while others also had been earning a handsome amount from it.

Then Airtel merged with Robi whereas other licence holders like Qubee, Banglalion, Ollo, Dhakacom and Rankstel were choking and started to fade away, making it very difficult for Summit Communications to start business.

"As per licence conditions, we are not allowed to give corporate connections or add home connectivity. We had very few telecom operators and ISPs to serve. These challenges themselves were a recipe for disaster."

It was not viable for Summit to invest Tk 1,000-2,000 crore on infrastructure for the next 5 to 10 years as it was unsure whether it would be able to sell the service.

"So instead of going for large-scale investment, we became their customers at first. We deployed a strong network in Dhaka and Chattogram, but for going nationwide we utilised existing network of other operators either by leasing or adopting barter model."

When slowly a cash flow started, Summit started to build its own network.

"We grew our business depending on this mixture of leased and own network backbone."

The way Summit Communications has built the infrastructure in a matured industry has never been seen in any country in the world.

In Bangladesh, Summit became the first local communication company to be the largest VAT payer for FY19 as a compliant company.

Summit as terrestrial cable operator partnered with Tata Communications and Bharti Airtel and took redundancy from SEA-ME-WE4 and SEA-ME-WE5 submarine cable in order to provide the seamless internet to the country.

"We are providing the backbone to a couple of thousands of ISPs, which are giving the last mile connectivity."

Now any small ISP can compete and stand equal with the players who are big and have been operating in the market for a long time.

"An ISP in Rajshahi can also now give internet connection to any remote bank branch and connect to Dhaka through us."

Summit has liberalised the industry, empowered the ISPs, ensured equality and built a common network.

The small and medium ISPs purchase the transmission services at a maximum of Tk 200 per Mbps and spend a maximum of Tk 400 for internet, in total Tk 600 per Mbps. Most of them maintain a contention ratio of 1:8 or 1:10, meaning the bandwidth unit is shared by every 8 or 10 connections.

So, they spend Tk 600 per Mbps for every 8 to 10 connections or Tk 60- 85 for a single connection whereas they charge Tk 300-500 per Mbps links. It means NTTN and the internet represents only around 20 per cent of the cost for ISPs.

There are some ISPs that maintain a contention ratio of up to 1:20, for which the customers suffer.

Nowadays, offers of ISPs have become a marketing gimmick where they offer a 10 Mbps link for Tk 1,000-1,500, but the customer does not even get 1 Mbps during the busy hours.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, the number of users per connection has also increased suddenly -- in some cases it went up as high as 1:40 to 1:50.

Fixed broadband penetration hits 70-80 per cent in developed countries and 20-30 per cent in advanced developing nations. But it is only 5 per cent in Bangladesh and the country has all the potential to increase the rate to 20 per cent.

In every country, mobile internet flourishes first and broadband comes later but slowly, it takes a major share of the market and this It will take place in Bangladesh also.

"In the next seven years, another 20,000 small and big towers will be needed to provide 4G and 5G services and as a tower operator we want to occupy 30 per cent of them," Islam said.

shoyeb@thedailystar.net