Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL) yesterday officially announced its connectivity with the country’s second undersea cable. The second submarine connectivity was officially launched at 5pm yesterday after a meeting of SEA-ME-WE 5 management body held in Istanbul, Parvez Monon Ashraf, deputy general manager, BSCCL and project director of the second submarine cable landing station, told The Independent.
Monwar Hossain, managing director of BSCCL, was present at the press conference that was held after the meeting of SEA-ME-WE 5 management body in Istanbul.
When asked if Bangladesh has received signal, Parvez said, “Yes, we have received signal. However it will take some more days to get its service to all over the country.”
Bangladesh joined the SEA-ME-WE 5 consortium in March 2014 spending Tk 660 crore. Of the total cost, the government has provided Tk 166 crore while BSCCL has contributed Tk 142 crore and the remaining Tk 352 crore has been collected as loan from the Islamic Development Bank.
The country got its first submarine cable connection—SEA-ME-WE-4 -- in 2006. SEA-ME-WE-4 has already passed more than half of its lifespan and that is why Bangladesh is needed to connect with another cable before 2025.  At present, India has eight connections, Pakistan four and Sri Lanka three.
The SEA-ME-WE 5 Consortium signed an agreement in Kuala Lumpur on March 7, 2014 to build a state-of-the-art undersea cable. The SEA-ME-WE 5 cable will span approximately 20,000 km, connecting 17 countries through Points-of-Presence (POPs) from Singapore to the Middle East to France and Italy in Western Europe, with a system capacity of 24 Tbps. The cable has connected Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Djibuti, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Turkey and France via 19 landing points. Initially, the lifespan of the cable is set at 20 years but it could be extended by five years.