// Shamsul Basunia //
India's northeastern states are unable to import the
full load of 10-gigabit per-second bandwidth from Bangladesh under a deal due
to their infrastructural constraints. They are taking only 3GBPS now, to start
with. According to Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited, India does not
have the capacity to import and use the 10 Gbps for now as per the deal. In a
prelude to the formal opening, Bangladesh, on February 8, unofficially began
bandwidth export to India through the Akhaura-Agartala border. The state-owned
company had signed a deal with the Indian state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam
Limited on June 6 last year for exporting bandwidth during the Indian prime
minister's visit to Bangladesh.
According to the agreement, Bharat Sanchar Nigam
Limited (BSNL) decided to import 10 Gbps of bandwidth for Tripura state from
September last year, but the export timing had been fixed for August. Later,
both parties missed the deadline. According to the agreement, the volume of
bandwidth will be shared with other northeastern states of India. The submarine
cable company will get the payments at the beginning of each quarter while
Bangladesh will earn Tk 96 million a year by exporting bandwidth to India.
BSCCL is exporting bandwidth at $10 per Mbp. India can increase the volume of
bandwidth up to 40Gbps gradually, as per agreement.
