3G in Bangladesh

We have been also hearing about 3G in Bangladesh for quite long time by some media sources and seminars on different times, still we are not very sure about its implementation.

3G:

International Telecommunications Union (ITU): IMT-2000 consists of six radio interfaces

W-CDMA also known as UMTS
CDMA2000
TD-CDMA / TD-SCDMA
UWC (often implemented with EDGE)
DECT

3G Considerations:

Speed
Minimum speed of 2 Mbit/s for stationary or walking users, and 348 kbit/s in a moving vehicle

Service
Converged fixed, mobile, voice, data, Internet and multimedia services. One of its key visions is to provide seamless global roaming, enabling users to move across borders while using the same number and handset

Flexibility
Providing a highly flexible system, capable of supporting a wide range of services and applications. The IMT-2000 standard accommodates five possible radio interfaces based on three different access technologies (FDMA, TDMA and CDMA)

Affordability
3G systems had to be affordable, in order to encourage their adoption by consumers and operators

Compatibility
3G has to be compatible with existing systems. 2G systems, such as the GSM standard

Design
3G must be easily expandable in order to allow for growth in users, coverage areas, and new services, with minimum initial investment

More info: http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/imt-2000/technology.html#Cellular Standards for the Third Generation

 

We already have CDMA2000 in the country, Citycell and other PSTN operators are providing mobile broadband services by CDMA2000 technology. For recent few years our mobile phones has also has got the technology of supporting 3G technology, however we are still stuck at the fact of creating guidelines/ policies etc.

When will we actually get this service?

GrameenPhone’s Internet & the reality

GrameenPhone started to provide internet service in Bangladesh since few years and is the first to provide such service to people. It uses EDGE technology for this. EDGE is a GSM 2.5 technology but not 3G, often referred as pre-3G.

Grammen has picked-up customers quickly, although the service was available to only limited number of people. It’s very obvious that with increase of customers, they didn’t put extra care on increase of band-width. The ultimate sufferers were the subscribers who are putting money in every month and day, but not getting a good speed at all.

You can get full details from below link.

http://www.grameenphone.com/index.php?id=134

Aktel Launches EDGE Internet

Mobile operator Aktel (TM International) has recently launched EDGE internet service in Bangladesh. Earlier it was providing this service using GPRS technology, but considering the fact that GPRS is very slow and customer were depending on mobile internet services more and more.

So far I’ve heard the speed is good, not less than 10 kBps which is I think fine.

Above is the advertisement being made in the newspapers for Aktel Internet. Click for the link.