Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate bandwidth link from Bangladesh to North East that will connect the region directly with international broadband gateway. (File photo)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to inaugurate tomorrow broadband connectivity to North-East states via Bangladesh to strengthen telecom services in the region.
"Prime Minister will tomorrow inaugurate bandwidth link from Bangladesh to North East that will connect the region directly with international broadband gateway and improved telecom services there," an official told news agency PTI.
The agreement between India and Bangladesh for this project was signed at Dhaka on June 6 in the presence of prime ministers of both the countries.
Under the project, an international gateway for broadband connectivity will be set up at Agartala in which connectivity will be provided through Bangladesh under an agreement between state-run BSNL and Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company limited (BSCCL) using network of Bangladesh Telecom Company Limited.
An international bandwidth cable is present at Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh. The connectivity between Cox's Bazaar cable station and Akhaura at international border has been built by BSCCL. On Indian side, BSNL has laid about 3-4 kilometres from Agartala to Akhaura in Tripura.
Before this link, telecom connectivity or basic bandwidth for networks was provided to North East from Chennai via Kolkata. The new link will be now a short route cable between Cox Bazar cable landing station in Bangladesh to Agartala through Akhaura.
The cost of the project is Rs 19.1 crore and BSNL will bear annual operational expenditure of $1.2 million from its own resources.
This link will deliver bandwidth of 10 Gbps which can be extended up to 40 Gbps.