Data consumption in the country increased by 34 percent in the July-November period of the current fiscal year (2018-19) due to growing use of internet for individual and business purposes.
Besides, flourishing of local contents and online-centric services also helped attract more internet users and bandwidth usage accordingly, said market experts.
They also said increased online activities by the users in the run-up to the December 30 national polls were another reason for the rise in data consumption in the country in the period.
According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission data, international internet bandwidth consumption increased by 228 gigabits per second to 900Gbps at the end of November, 2018 from 672Gbps in June.
Bandwidth consumption by the country’s internet users was 411Gbps in June, 2017.
In June, 2016, country’s total international bandwidth consumption was 265Gbps while it was 186Gbps in December, 2016 and only 8Gbps in 2009.
As per the BTRC’s latest data, people used 9.18 crore connections through mobile and broadband internet as of November, 2018.
Of the connections, 93.68 per cent or 8.6 crore were given by the mobile phone operators and the rest 6.32 per cent or 57.78 lakh were given by the broadband internet service providers.
The number of internet users in the country was 7.33 crore at the end of June, 2017.
Although the mobile operators have the maximum number of internet connections, they are using around 35 per cent bandwidth of the country’s total consumption, said a senior official of Internet Service Provider Association Bangladesh.
International terrestrial cable (ITC) service providers, which provide bandwidth to the mobile and broadband internet service providers, have capacity to provide 960Gbps of bandwidth against the total demand for around 900Gbps in the country, an official of an ITC service provider said.
Of the total data usage in Bangladesh, state-owned Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited provides 65 per cent bandwidth, Summit Communications provides 18 per cent and Fiber @ Home Global provides 15 per cent bandwidth to the internet users.
Besides the entities, Novocom, Mango Teleservices, BD Link Communication and 1Asia Alliance Communication meet the rest 2 per cent demand.
The lone state-owned submarine cable company has already got connected with the second cable which also supplies a huge quantity of bandwidth, the official said.
Initially, the capacity of the cable was 200Gbps of bandwidth but it has the capacity to provide up to 1,500Gbps of bandwidth.
The country currently receives 200Gbps of bandwidth from its first connection, SEA-ME-WE 4. BSCCL got connected with the cable in 2016.
It got connected with the second submarine cable in 2018. Bangladesh joined the consortium in March, 2014 at a cost of Tk 660 crore.
Besides providing bandwidth to the local subscribers, BSCCL also exports 10Gbps bandwidth to seven northern states of India.
Source: http://www.newagebd.net/article/61215/data-consumption-rises-by-34pc-in-jul-nov
