Submarine cable complications causing difficulty in using internet

Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) on Sunday said that internet speed has been slowed down due to complications of second submarine cable.   

Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) informed that users have been facing difficulties due to slow speed of internet since this noon.

BSCCL Managing Director Mashiur Rahman said, “Power supply problem has been occurred in the second submarine cable in Patuakhali. Renovation work is going on. Hope, this problem would be solved by today.”  

He said that the power supply cable of the submarine cable was cut at Patuakhali area by an excavator of a construction company, disrupting the connectivity.

The submarine cable consists of two cables — power supply cable and fibre optic cable.

The technical unit of  BSCCL already identified the location, where the cable was damaged, he said.

The incident took place at a time when the country’s dependency on the internet has reached at its peak due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A large segment of the country’s people is completely dependent on internet connectivity for some routine works.

The country got connected with the first undersea cable South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) in 2006 and with the second one SEA-ME-WE 5 in 2017.

At present, SEA-ME-WE-5 is providing a major portion of Bangladesh’s 1,700 Gbps bandwidth consumption.