Broadband News: BTRC slashes bandwidth fee for rural access

courtesy: bdnews24.com

Monday, 10-Nov-2008
Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has slashed the domestic bandwidth charge by 60 percent to reach the internet facilities to the rural people who have been on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The latest cut in charges, second in five months, takes effect from Dec.1, the telecoms regulator said in a press statement on Monday.

The BTRC has issued a circular on the service providers stating that the move came in order to help upgrade the living standards in the countryside by providing easy access to internet, the BTRC release said.

The authorities also instructed the mobile operators, PSTN operators and ISP to reschedule their charges by Nov. 13 in line with the reduced charges.

“The drop in the bandwidth charges by 60 percent will facilitate internet facilities in the remote villages to help alleviate poverty and ensure development there,” BTRC chairman retired major general Manzurul Alam told bdnews24.com

“The use of internet and broadband will see a jump nationwide after the move gets effective.”

As per the reduced charges Tk 200-250 per km for 50 km, Tk 155-200 per km for 51-100 km, Tk120-160 per km for 101-200 km, Tk100-130 per km for 201-300 km, Tk75-95 per km for 301 km and above have been fixed.

WIMAX roll-out in Bangladesh

Recently we have been hearing about WIMAX and its rolling-out in Bangladesh mainly aiming to the rural and condensed areas where Cable broadband service may not get through. Before going into more detail we should all know about WIMAX.

What is WIMAX:
As usual the details can be brought from Wikipedia, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX link.

Following from Wikipedia:

WiMAX, the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a telecommunications technology that provides wireless data in a variety of ways, from point-to-point links to full mobile cellular type access. It is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, which is also called WirelessMAN. The name “WiMAX” was created by the WiMAX Forum, which was formed in June 2001 to promote conformance and interoperability of the standard. The forum describes WiMAX as “a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL.

Features of WIMAX

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(So far I’ve added this today, I’ll add more on this)

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.