Broadband Vision --A perspective

I would like to share my passionate thoughts regarding the broadband penetration in the country and how it could empower the fellow citizen including common people. In this first essay I would like to introduce the “vision” in a simple language. I would like to expand the vision though my next two essays to elaborate the prospective. These essays are geared towards the policy makers and stake holders for the technological advancement of the country such a way that empowers our abundant man power towards pro growth.



Let me introduce a key catalyst that has the potential to incubate a global service industry in Bangladesh, as well as utilize our abundant human capital to earn foreign currency through export of IT services. To begin with, I would like to present two data point published June 2007 to your attention.

1. According to the survey of Japan External Trade Organization (Jetro) the monthly basic payment for broadband internet service in Bangladesh is continuously the highest in Asia.

2. In a joint statement, Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS), Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS), ISP Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) and Bangladesh Computer Association (BCA) said now local users use only 10 percent of the SEA-ME-WEA-4 bandwidth.

Due to globalization, this in fact, means relocating service and manufacturing jobs and facilities to an Asian country to improve profitability and capacity. Being the country with highest Broadband cost is not going to attract companies that need high speed broadband 24/7 (24 hours a day and 7 days a week) for all the employees. Moreover poor utilization (10% of SEA-ME-WEA-4 bandwidth) will not generate the “human capital” needed for budding broadband dependent IT service shops.

As a rule of thumb, for any high tech company, availability of affordable basic resources is a must. Corporations make investment decisions to tap those cheap resources. Hence improve the profit margin of that corporation. For Bangladesh, I believe that, we may have talented work force (or we could easily train them); but we need free (or affordable) high speed broadband. To me as technologist, guaranteeing these two basic resources will act as a catalyst which will trigger the most waited industry boom. IT service startups will burgeon from these two seeds.

How do we make it affordable? One way of making is to let it spread, let the people drive it, just remove the obstacles (uncertainty) from the path. No need for new policy or new regulation. Make thousands (abundance) of cheap licenses available to business community; only regulation you need to check that they are not sub-leasing or making money directly out of the license; hence the rate will be affordable due to the competition. Local cable connection service provider may hook up to the nearest fiber optic node through a router.

I am proposing nothing new here. A high-powered government committee on legalizing voice over internet protocol (VoIP) March 4th 2007 recommended allowing VoIP license to all operators, including the providers of mobile, land phone and internet services.

BTRC and BTTB may setup mirrored servers and gateways and bring the high speed node drop them at the major usages areas based on demand analysis. Fund to do that may come from ICT budget or national development budget. This will result in huge ROI (return on investment) for years to come from export of broadband based IT service industry.

Once we do that corporations around the world would evaluate the feasibility, competitive value and probability of being more profitable. If one customer “move in” then his competitor would like to reap the benefit as well. Similarly, incubators of Service Company from expatriates, foreign investors will send service contract to those local service companies to tap the potentials of local talent and human resources; hence will bring export currencies to the GDP. One example would be tax Preparation Company. This type of broadband based IT Service Company may serve USA customers 1:1 over phone. Bangladeshi service provider will enter all the financial data to the software in real-time to calculate the tax return.

Some other potentials for new business would be service order or new order preparation for new service. For example, a USA household wants to setup a cable TV service. A service company from Bangladesh can take that order and enter all the information after talking to the customer. Then generate a work order and send it to local service provider in USA. There may be hundreds of outsourcing business opportunity will open up for our English speaking and computer savvy broadband connected human resources.

To have a better vision of the possibility let us look at our neighboring country, this remains the destination of choice for global information-technology sourcing because of its talent pool, management capability and security and quality focus. This year they cashed in 31.4 Billion USD of software and related service export and expected to grow to 60 Billion by 2010. If we setup a cost friendly environment, we could very well attract some of that growth traffic toward Bangladesh.

What could be a better broadband policy?
Just ask for it and get it. Make the fiber optics network and gateway to SEA-ME-WEA-4 available to thousands of customer. They will then take it to the doorsteps of business, Universities, Colleges, Schools, homes and to everybody who wants for a competitive fee. This is just like any other long term investment. Revenue will not directly come from the license fee or access fee; but evolve many times more in the form of new business growth and new products.

In conclusion, I would appeal BTRC and BTTB to bring the infrastructure to tap the most benefit out of the submarine cable. You could design a compelling network once you know your customers. In this case your customers are the small business of local cable service providers. They can easily convert into IT service shop when the moment is right. Empower them and enlighten them to close the “digital divide”. They will setup the momentum to take off the awaited “IT outsources shops” in Bangladesh, like the RMG industry did early 80s.