Dhaka: Managing Director (acting) of Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) Abdus Salam on Wednesday said Bangladesh is now connected to a second submarine cable at Kuakata Submarine Cable Landing Station.

Abdus Salam told news agency UNB, ‘Bangladesh started the test transmission of the second submarine cable SEA-ME-WE-5 through this operation. It will take more time to establish commercial connection. The commercial operation is dependent on the completion of the transmission link from Dhaka to Kuakata landing station.'

He added that the link had been officially set up at a meeting of the first submarine SEA-ME-WE-5 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5) in Istanbul, Turkey on Tuesday.

Managing director Abdus Salam Khan said that the commencement of the second submarine cable will provide an additional bandwidth of more than 1,500 Gigabyte (GB). Bangladesh got connected with the first submarine cable SEA-ME-WE-4 with a capacity of 200 Gbps (Gigabits per second).

Seventeen countries of South Asia, South-East Asia, Africa and Europe are getting connected to SEA-ME-WE-5 under one consortium. Bangladesh signed the agreement with the consortium for the second link in 2011.

He added that the rate of internet consumption of the country is more than 400 Gbps. State-owned BSCCL provides 120 Gbps while the rest is imported from India. The connection with the first submarine cable SEA-ME-WE-4 in 2005 was a capacity of 200 Gbps (Gigabits per second).  

Besides that, the country is connected to six alternate submarine cables (ITC or International Terrestrial Cable) .

Meanwhile, the Cox's Bazar Cable Landing Station (Cox's Bazar CLS) is currently the sole international submarine cable landing station in Bangladesh, and the Cox's Bazar CLS was built by BSCCL for the cable landing of SMW4 in Bangladesh, which lands at the Kolatoli beach in Cox's Bazar.