To cater to the growing demand, the government has decided to go forward with the plan to join a third submarine cable. This submarine cable, third of its kind, will be fully functional by 2024 and will be added around 7200 Gbps of Bandwidth to the national information infrastructure.
Around the same time, the country's first submarine cable network is expected to be decommissioned. Built around 2005 and commissioned in 2006, SEA-ME-WE 4 is the first submarine fibre optic cable Bangladesh got connected to. Being the sole Backbone of the nation's internet connectivity, any interruption in service meant the entire nation had to suffer.
According to industry insiders, standard long route submarine fibre optic cable has a life expectancy of a 10 - 15 years. After that maintenance becomes costly and frequent. Bangladesh's first fibre submarine cable is already on its 15th year now. Human errors such as anchorage of seabound ships on the cable have resulted in some damage to the first submarine cables. When asked if the new cable will see similar downtime, Mirza Kamal Ahmed, General Manager of Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL), said, "In the last fifteen years, we had one severe accident which was in August 2019 when an excavator damaged the second cable. Besides, the seabed in our region has frequent tremors causes disruption. Rest of the slowdown happens in National Telecommunication Transmission Network (NTTN)".