Abu Saeed Khan: A Champion of Connectivity

Abu Saeed Khan has taken leave of us. We celebrate a life well lived and mourn the loss of a valued friend and colleague. The public sphere of Bangladesh and the region is diminished by his demise.

I met him in Dhaka in September 2000, on my first visit to Bangladesh, where I had been invited as a former regulator to a regional event organised to welcome and encourage the just-established Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC). Learning that the World Bank had pulled its funding to signal displeasure about some last-minute chicanery to create openings for political interference in the governing statute, I did not limit myself to bland good wishes as is customary. I could see my words resonating with a majestic looking man across the room. He came up to me in the break and thanked me. That was the beginning of a friendship, a collaboration and conversations that extended over two decades and many countries in addition to Bangladesh.

In the years that I have known him, he held many positions. He worked for Ericsson out of Malaysia, he was the first Secretary General of AMTOB, the trade association of Bangladeshi mobile operators, he served as a consultant to the World Bank, UN-ESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) and others. He was the voice in Bangladesh for LIRNEasia, an information and communication technology policy and regulation think-tank. But there was one constant. He was laser-focused on making decent quality connectivity available to all at affordable prices.

I have been fortunate enough to have had opportunities to work from within government and from outside to advance these common objectives. Abu Saeed Khan had to work from outside. But that did not in any way diminish his contribution. I will use only one example: the rationalisation of 1800 MHz frequencies with the consent of all the operators that occurred during his leadership at AMTOB. The BTRC Chairman was quoted as saying that "after the rearrangement, a total of 15.6 Mhz frequency worth more than Tk 2,000 crore will be saved, which will be sold during 3G auction." I used this case in my teaching and talks to show that good regulatory practices can also be initiated by those from outside government.

Coming from a media background, Abu Saeed Khan was always available to journalists with evidence-based analyses of current issues. He lived through the efflorescence of the telecom sector and greatly contributed to the understanding of some key issues. He was always learning and always sharing his knowledge. He sat through the entirety of a LIRNEasia course on regulation in Singapore. His suggestion that we use microwave attenuation by rainfall in our disaster risk reduction work led to a short-listed research proposal.

Abu Saeed Khan was present during the founding of LIRNEasia in 2004. Over the past 20 years, he was a stalwart colleague. Consistent with LIRNEasia's mission, he conceptualised LION [Longest International Open-Access Network]. In his words, Asia was behaving like it was not a continent but a collection of coastlines, with all the big pipes being undersea and none running overland. From the time he convinced me at the Islamabad Serena Hotel after much debate, we worked together to promote the concept. We won the cooperation of ESCAP, with the division responsible for ICT essentially reorienting its entire work plan around the concept of an Asia Pacific Information Superhighway (APIS). Perhaps in honour of the Bangladeshi origins of the concept, one of the key meetings of APIS was held in Dhaka. We met resistance at the ITU's (International Telecommunication Union) Bangkok office and within ESCAP with the transportation people. But we had impact. Every time I read about hybrid cables that snake their way through land and ocean, I think of his LION concept that catalysed new thinking on long-haul networks which raised the salience of redundancy and open access.

He was a great son of Bangladesh, proud of the language that defined its identity, and always wanting more for its people. His endeavours were not limited to one country. His work was not complete. But he did much in the time that he was given. He was kind and caring. He never lost hope. We are thankful to have been a part of his journey.

Rohan Samarajiva is the Founding Chair of LIRNEasia