BTRC caps Indian bandwidth imports at 50%

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on Wednesday reduced the national usage of terrestrial bandwidth imported from India to 50%, down from 60%.  

Every International Internet Gateway (IIG) operator must ensure that no more than 50% of their total internet traffic is routed through International Terrestrial Cables (ITCs), the regulator stated in its amended clause of the IIG Licensing Guideline.  

To create a level playing field between submarine and terrestrial cable businesses, the regulator has also raised the mandatory revenue-sharing rate with the government for ITCs to 3% from 1%, aligning it with the rate paid by the submarine cable operator.  

At a meeting in January, the Posts and Telecommunications Division increased the market share target for the lone submarine cable operator, Bangladesh Submarine Cable PLC, to 60% from the existing 40%. 

To achieve this, the government instructed the state-owned, publicly listed company to make its services more affordable and develop special packages for data centres, cache servers and the anticipated content delivery networks (CDNs) of global giants like Google, Meta, Akamai and Amazon.  

Welcoming the regulatory move, Md Ariful Huq, deputy general manager (Marketing and Sales) of Bangladesh Submarine Cable, told The Business Standard that the country spends nearly $50 million annually to import approximately 4.5 terabits per second (Tbps) of terrestrial bandwidth from India, and the cap could save around $12 million a year.  

He said Submarine Cable is capable of serving more than 60% of the market, adding that the company has already offered a 30% bonus capacity for international private leased circuit (IPLC) services through its SMW-4 cable. 

For IP transit services, it is providing a 50% bonus bandwidth to select destinations, mainly Singaporean servers, to make its services more appealing to IIGs seeking popular content in the country.  

Ariful Huq also noted that the state-owned company has improved the speed of processing customer requests. Bangladesh currently consumes 6-7 Tbps of bandwidth, with over 70% involving CDN content from providers such as Google, Meta, Akamai and others.  

India, having established CDN servers within its territory in recent years, now offers faster content delivery through ITC cables, which has helped increase the market share of terrestrial internet to around 60% in Bangladesh.  

The BTRC has also included a clause requiring IIGs to maintain satellite-based internet connections as a 10% capacity backup.  

Aslam Hossain, managing director of Bangladesh Submarine Cable, earlier told TBS that lowering the cap would enhance national resource utilisation. 

He noted that the company currently has an installed capacity of 7.2 Tbps, which is expected to rise to over 20.4 Tbps next year. Additionally, three private submarine cables are projected to add 45 Tbps to the national capacity by 2027.  

However, ITC business operators expressed concerns about potential declines in service quality and financial losses resulting from the policy change.  

"ITCs purchase their capacity through annual contracts, and a sudden drop in sales would hurt them," said Lt Commander (retd) Moshiur Rahman, chief operating officer of the top-tier ITC operator Fiber@Home Global.  

He added that major content providers like Google and Meta route data from geographically convenient CDN servers, and the IIGs' mandatory routing to more distant Singaporean servers might degrade the quality of service.