"We believe this country is ready to become a hub for software development", said Carsten Linskog, CEO of ProData Consult, a Danish IT company.

Linskog named three companies he thinks are interesting partners to outsource software: DataSoft, Flora Systems and ComputerEase Limited. Companies that have previously developed software for banks, manufacturing firms and a string of hardware producers.

On a more critical note he said. "The government must realise, however, that the country needs the submarine fibre optic cable, now! Otherwise Bangladesh will miss out."

By highlighting the experiences of the local company Dohatec, Linskog illustrated just how important the fibre optic cable is. Linskog said: "It's very sad, but take Dohatec. They have turned down outsourcing offers, as they often lack the bandwidth to transfer files." When confronted with this, Namul Huda, CEO of Dohatec, played down the problems. "We can cope. When we transfer files up to 500 Megabyte, we call the service providers and tell them to extend our bandwidth, until we have the files." He agreed, however, that this can only be a temporary solution. At present, software outsourcing cannot take off on a large scale, simply because bandwidth is too expensive.

As much as the Danish IT-experts complained about the local infrastructure, all the more impressed they were by the IT skills they encountered. Morton Kjaesgaard, Director of the open source programming company Magenta in Copenhagen, said, he was positively surprised. He had not reckoned on such high standard programming skills. "I knew how poor Bangladesh is and I have seen the reports on corruption. I thought it would be a matter of us coming here and telling people 'this what we want you to do and this is the amount we want you to pay.' But it's not like that at all."

Kjaesgaard now realises that so much more is possible. He even speculated about a joint venture with Stitel Technologies Ltd., a company who impressed him exceptionally. Stitel Technologies Ltd. is a provider of software based voice, data and video communication products for wireline and wireless enterprise markets. They - like Kjaesgaard's company - have a lot of experience with open source software and could prove to be the perfect match.

Only being in the country for four days, Kjaesgaard stressed how outspoken and friendly people seemed here. But he realised that there is always the danger of culture clashes. "People told me that Bangladeshis are very proud. They would rather stop work than admit a programming job is too difficult", he said. He therefore wants to give a co-operation with Stitel time. "We have to establish our friendship first. This could take a year. Then we might get engaged. If things go really well, we'll get married", Kjaesgaard said.

A company in the city that has overcome any cultural differences and is already working intensely with a Danish company, is eGeneration, a start-up founded by the 28-year-old Shameem Ahsan two years ago. His company's development shows, just how valuable meetings at SoftExpo can be. "We met the Danish company Nordsource here at last year", Ahsan said and added, "it took 10 months of getting to know each other. Then things went very quickly. I went to Aalborg in Denmark and a month ago we started our first project", Ahsan explains. eGeneration is developing a content management system for the Danish town of Norresundby, a small town on the most northern island of Denmark. A tool for city administration to manage their web site more effectively. Ahsan did not want to mention how much Nordsource is paying for the job, but looking at how his company has grown from two to fifteen staffers in just eighteen months, it must be a substantial amount for the Bangladesh outsourcing market.

Ahsan, however, also complains about the submarine fibre optic cable not being in place yet. He sees his main market in Europe. "By the end of next year we want to be the outsourcing partners of at least 11 European companies", he said. But this is a goal eGeneration can only achieve, if the submarine cable is finally installed. "We have to work nightshifts because file transfers take so long", Ahsan explained and added, "this is too costly." Skilled labour might be cheap in Bangladesh, but the long wait for the fibre optic cable is artificially making outsourcing to the country more expensive, compared to prices in China and India, the two main competitors of Bangladesh.

Despite all the praise of the Danish delegates for the impressive IT skills they encountered and despite such positive examples of young successful software companies like eGeneration, the market size of outsourcing to Bangladesh is still meagre. Currently, the country only has a stake of 12 million Dollars in offshore software development. The total market size of outsourcing for 2004 is estimated at 33 billion Dollars and is expected to triple by 2009. If this is not an incentive for the officials responsible to speed things up with the submarine fibre optic cable reaching Cox's Bazar and finally the rest of the country, then what is?