Bangladesh to face internet disruptions until evening

Internet connectivity in Bangladesh will face partial disruptions for 12 hours today due to the maintenance of a submarine cable. That comes on top of the country's already slow internet speed.  

From 6 am to 6 pm, a consortium has scheduled maintenance for a land cable fault near the Tuas landing station of the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) submarine cable system in Singapore, said Bangladesh Submarine Cables PLC (BSCPLC) in a press release.

During this period, services on the circuits connected from Cox's Bazar to Singapore via SMW4 will be temporarily disrupted.

The 1st submarine cable had undergone similar maintenance works on July 13.

The announcement comes a couple of days after Bangladesh passed five days without the internet which severely affected personal life and economic activities.

Bangladesh uses 5,800Gbps (Gigabits per second) international bandwidth. More than half of it comes through international terrestrial cable licence holders that import bandwidth from India across land borders.

Nearly 800Gbps bandwidth is provided by the first undersea cable with which Bangladesh was connected in 2006. Its capacity has recently been upgraded to 3,800Gbps.

SEA-ME-WE 5, the second submarine cable installed in Kuakata, supplies around 1,700Gbps.

Bangladesh is set to receive 13,200Gbps from a third undersea cable, SEA-ME-WE 6, by 2025.