Bangladesh rejects India`s bandwidth proposal bid

Bangladesh has rejected a proposal for the transit of bandwidth to India's northeastern Seven Sisters states.

The project, spearheaded by Summit Communications and Fiber at Home in collaboration with India's Bharti Airtel, promised to enhance internet connectivity for the Seven Sisters, where geographical challenges and long distances to existing submarine cable stations have long hindered service quality.

Using Bangladesh as a transit route would have drastically reduced the distance for internet traffic by 3,700 kilometres, cutting latency by 37 milliseconds and significantly lowering costs.

Under this arrangement, Bangladesh would serve as the transit route -- enabling faster internet connection for India's northeastern states of Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland.

At present, the states, popularly known as the Seven Sisters of India, are connected to Singapore through submarine cables in Chennai using the neighbouring country's domestic fibre optic network.

Due to the mountainous nature of the region, the maintenance of fibre optic networks and the installation of new networks are relatively difficult.

Subsequently, the internet regulator wrote to the telecom ministry last week to recall its earlier application.
Additionally, the lack of prior bilateral discussions raised concerns about transparency and the project's overall viability.

Industry experts also warned that facilitating IPLC transit for Indian operators could overshadow Bangladesh's potential to export bandwidth to neighbouring regions like Myanmar and China's northwest.

Source: Agencies