An Overview of the Products, Services and Business potentials of the Submarine Cable in Bangladesh

Md. Monwar Hossain                                                                                Parvez M. Ashraf    

Introduction

Bangladesh possesses great potentials in the ICT and Telecommunication sectors. As we are regularly experiencing, there is an increasing trend of using computers and availing mobile phone facilities or even the Tabs in the rural areas as in the urban areas of the Country. Bangladesh has got natural competitive advantage in terms of manpower, location and cost for establishing very promising Call Center or Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industries. Many young talents of the Country are already involved in IT related jobs like- Programming, Software development and outsourcing works, and thus the Software industry in Bangladesh has become flourishing with the continuous and restless efforts of the energetic Bangladeshi entrepreneurs within the last few years. Opening and widening up the opportunities with proper Government initiatives and support of the private sector can build a strong IT based infrastructure. The global ICT market has already appraised about the skills and standards of the Bangladeshi talents.  However, all these services and activities related to IT would depend heavily on the internet and International data connectivity.  Presently there are around 120 million mobile phone users and around 44 million Internet users in the country. In addition to usage of mobile phones for voice calls, there is a substantial increase in internet usage through mobile communications in rural and urban areas. ICT and Telecommunication services are getting increasingly popular to the people because these sectors have contributed much in changing their economic condition to a higher level. It is because of the Submarine Cable, that various service providers such as IIG, IGW, BWA, etc. have been benefitted and Internet traffic for both Voice and Data has increased exponentially in Telecommunication industry of Bangladesh. With the efficient and effective utilization of the enormous potentials of the Submarine Cable, the Telecommunications and ICT sector promises a significant contribution to the economy of Bangladesh to boost the nation into a middle income country soon.

Role of the Submarine Cable in Expansion of Broadband Internet in Bangladesh

In the past, before the submarine cable era started in Bangladesh, the long distance telecommunication of Bangladesh was dependent on Satellite systems with severe limitation of bandwidth and speed of communication. We have become aware now that the availability of Internet with high magnitude of bandwidth has great impact on the economic development of the country. Becoming a member of South East Asia- Middle East-Western Europe-4 (SEA-ME-WE-4) consortium, Bangladesh received initial capacity of 7.5 Gbps. Presently, capacity of Bangladesh in SEA-ME-WE-4 submarine Cable System of BSCCL is around 200 Gbps. In recent years, as a result of connecting with submarine cable system there were rapid expansions of the broadband internet industry, resulting in over 180 registered ISP's by 2005 and the number of Internet subscriptions grew from 186,000 in 2000 to 617,300 in 2009. According to official reports, in Bangladesh the total number of Internet Subscribers has reached 36.25 million at the end of August 2013 which is around 23% of the total population.  

The Submarine Cable under BSCCL could provide services to the subscribers at much cheaper price than others as BSCCL would be able to connect many international IP transit points with its own submarine cable system. Bangladesh would expect good revenue earnings by introducing licenses for these services. As a result of connecting with the submarine cable system there were rapid expansions of the broadband internet industry. Keeping the “Vision 2021, Digital Bangladesh” in view, the Government of Bangladesh has exclusive plans to extend the broadband internet and telecommunication facilities for the benefits of the people as elaborated in Government’s ILDTS (International Long Distance Telecommunication Service), Broadband and ICT Policies: the Broadband Penetration rate required to be pulled up from 7% (2011) to 30% within year 2015, by 2015, all the union councils are needed to be under the broadband network, by 2013, about 1.7 million educational institutions (schools and colleges) were supposed to be provided with broadband connections, etc. Already the DCs (District Commissioners) and ADCs are connected; and 1000 Union Councils would be connected through optical fibers and fiber optic connectivity will reach Upazilla Health Centers to provide access to information, video conferencing, telemedicine, etc. The Government has formulated the new standard of Broadband and the bandwidth has to be at least 5 Mbps to meet that standard. To implement the policies and the Vision 2021, a large amount of bandwidth needs to be made available to the Government which will be provided by the Submarine Cable.

After catering for the needs for bandwidth inside the country, Bangladesh has still got opportunities to lease out submarine cable bandwidth to land locked neighboring countries like Nepal and Bhutan. BSCCL is presently working to design for links to Indian North-Eastern provinces for transport of IP transit as below;

(a)  Cox’s Bazar – Chittagong – Comilla – B. baria – Akhaura – Agortola

(b) Cox’s Bazar – Chittagong – Comilla – B. baria – Sylhet – Tamabil – Shilong (Meghalaya).

There is a demand of BSCCL bandwidth in Myanmar also. If BSCCL could be involved to tap the Telecom requirements of those parts of the Globe, it could earn a good deal of foreign currency during the life-times of the submarine cables.

Principal products and services of BSCCL

Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) is an International Long Distance Communications and International Internet Gateway (IIG) operator that provides various Telecommunications services through the Submarine Cable network.

BSCCL has a Submarine Cable Landing Station located at Jhilongja, Cox’s Bazar from where Backhaul Service Providers are connected. Clients can connect their fiber optic cable for IPLC (International Private Leased Circuits) service from co-location centers (Presently at Chittagong, Mohakhali/Dhaka and Moghbazar) of Backhaul Service Providers. Moreover, with a view to provide multiple options for backhaul connectivity, a co-location centre has been established in Cox's bazar landing station. BSCCL's valued clients can choose their backhaul providers who could directly connect their fibers at the co-location centers of BSCCL. BSCCL is the root service provider of submarine cable bandwidth and handles country’s only submarine cable. Presently, BSCCL is providing the following services:

• Bandwidth service for different routes and different levels such as STM-1, STM-4, STM-16 to the International Internet Gateway (IIG) companies through International Private Leased Circuits (IPLC).
• Bandwidth service for different routes and different levels such as STM-1, STM-4, STM-16 to the International (Voice) Gateway (IGW) companies.
• IP Transit Services to IIG companies
• IPLC services to any Corporate Customers as per the approval of telecommunications regulatory body of Bangladesh.
• IIG (International Internet Gateway) which should help the people to get broadband Internet with cheaper rate and better quality of service.

Presently, the Company offers the following products:

1. IPLC (International Private Leased Circuit) for IIG
2. IPLC (International Private Leased Circuit) for IGW
3. IPLC (International Private Leased Circuit) with IP Transit for IIG
4. IIG (International Internet Gateway) Services for ISP
5. Dedicated Leased Circuits for Corporate Clients

An International Private Leased Circuit (IPLC) is a dedicated end-to-end connectivity between any two points of locations. It is suitable for IIG, IGW and also for International & National Organizations/Corporations (who require reliable & secure links with committed bandwidth for data/voice/video/internet communications between their offices).

Key Benefits of BSCCL’s IPLC and Internet Gateway services are the following:

1)      High Bandwidth Dedicated Full Duplex Digital Communication

2)      Private, Reliable & Secure

3)      Fast, Efficient & Error free

4)      Global Reach through India, Malaysia, Singapore, Middle East & Europe.

5)      One Stop Shopping Facilities

6)      24 x 7 Tech Support

7)      Constant exchange of Data, Voice, Video, etc. in large volumes & in various formats between multiple destinations.

Joining with the Second Submarine Cable

Existing SMW-4 cable is the only submarine cable that has kept Bangladesh connected with the international information superhighway. Due to any calamity or other reasons, if this cable gets into any kind of physical damage or disruption, country’s international long distance telecommunication would suffer badly. That’s why Bangladesh has been working for long to achieve redundancy for the existing SEA-ME-WE-4 (SMW-4) Submarine Cable as it is a necessity for the country to support for Internet and voice traffic during outage in the SMW-4 cable.

The new SEA-ME-WE-5 (SMW-5) cable will be another submarine cable connecting South East Asia with Western Europe through Middle East and Africa. The cable would also be extended to Hong Kong and Japan. Bangladesh will join as a branch party to this submarine cable. BSCCL worked with the SMW-5 Consortium for implementation of a Branch Sharing arrangement with Myanmar through the “Branch on Branch” architecture, which has helped Bangladesh to reduce the cost in a significant way.

SMW-5 Submarine Cable System will be a 100G DWDM based 20,000 Km long repeatered system that is planned to connect eighteen (18) landing stations. The system will be built with three (3) fiber pairs having 80 λ/fiber-pair (λ, pronounced as “lambda”, is the Greek letter for wavelength of Light), so 80 x 100 Gbps = 8 (eight) Terabits per second capacity for each fiber pair; thus providing a very high design capacity of 24 Terabits per second.

The technology that made this 100 G transmission possible is Polarization Multiplexed QPSK modulation (PM-QPSK) with a coherent receiver. Modulation is required to ensure propagation, to perform multiple accesses and to enhance the SNR, as well as to achieve bandwidth compression. PM-QPSK modulation technique would decrease the baud or symbol rate of the system, using four bits per symbol, keeping the optical spectrum four times narrower than the unreduced baud rate. Because of the capability to pass through multiple Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (OADMs) and its practical PMD (Polarization Mode Dispersion) tolerance, PM-QPSK is recognized as a viable format for deployment within 50GHz-spaced systems.

Alcatel-Lucent of France and NEC of Japan have been selected for jointly work on building the system.  Both suppliers will use their latest high performance equipments, cable and systems using efficient DWDM, Polarization Division Multiplexed Digital Phase Modulation/Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (PDM-QPSK or DP-QPSK) and Coherent detection technologies, with highly flexible ROADMs (Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer) along the links.

The Submarine Line Terminal Equipments (SLTEs) will handle very high speed traffic transported to a long distance; and the system will be extremely reliable with sufficient protection schemes and high speed automatic protection switching.

Advantages of joining the SMW-5 Consortium

Joining the SMW-5 cable consortium is expected to bring about a number of benefits for both BSCCL as a submarine cable company, and Bangladesh, as a country. Some of those benefits are described below:

(i) For extending the voice traffic to different parts of the World particularly Middle East, Europe and America, Bangladesh can have chances to reach these destinations almost without any extra charges.

(ii) For IP Transit, Bangladesh would have multi-choices to bring IP bandwidth at a cheaper rate covering both east & west side destinations. This means that BSCCL shall have better opportunity to arrange its traffic (IP) from cheaper destinations of East & West.

(iii) Bangladesh as a country would enjoy the total benefit of redundancy of the circuits & also the multiple destinations for SMW-5.

(iv)  The unit cost for bandwidth would be much cheaper in case of SMW-5 cable. Moreover, the adaptation of future technology for future expansion can be easy approachable.

(v)   There would be a very good opportunity to flourish BPO industries (Call centers, data entry, Software export etc) in Bangladesh with the support of two submarine cable communication systems.

An additional plan has also been made by BSCCL to interconnect the two submarine cable Landing Stations of Bangladesh with a submarine cable. In this way, the two landing stations Cox’s Bazar (for SMW-4) and Kuakata (for SMW-5) will be interlinked. The estimated length of this link is estimated as of the length of 350 Km. It is planned to be made of 2 (two) fiber pairs with an initial capacity of 100 Gbps/per fiber pair and 16 Tbps as design capacity. Other important feature proposed in this submarine cable system is that this would be a repeater less system with a design life of about 25 years. The two submarine cable systems will also be interconnected through a terrestrial DWDM backbone. However, there are vulnerabilities of cable cuts at any location along the route of the terrestrial system, and the interconnection through both the Submarine Cable and Terrestrial System working as a ring will ensure the strong security and redundancy in the Submarine Cable Infrastructure of Bangladesh which will keep the core communication infrastructure seamlessly connected to the Information Superhighway.

Conclusion

The network of submarine or undersea cables around the earth has made today’s broadband internet very fast. It further holds the potential of offering more data transmission capacity.  The global network of today is made of extensive undersea submarine and terrestrial network segments linked together to connect almost all continents of the world. With the development of branching units, more than one destination can be served by a single cable system. Now-a-days, a vast majority of the international traffic is carried by the submarine cables. The reliability of submarine cables is considered high, as multiple paths can be made available in the event of a cable break. Also, the typical information carrying capacity of a single optical fiber in the submarine cables is several terabits per second (Tbps) with such small latencies as just a few milliseconds (ms). It is almost impossible for any other system to match with these submarine cable systems in terms of signal quality, bit-rate (capacity) and latency. Thus, there is a good demand for the optical submarine cable links and these have become national assets to the owner countries.

References

1. Alcatel: www.alcatel-lucent.com/submarine/
2. NEC: http://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/nw/submarine/index.html
3. Optical Internetworking Forum: http://www.oiforum.com/
4. Telegeography: www.telegeography.com
5. Suboptic Forum: www.suboptic.org
6. Infinera: www.infinera.com
7. Optical Fiber Telecommunications part V- vol. B (Systems and Networks) edited by I. P. Kaminow,T. Li & A. E. Willner
8. Performance of Dual-Polarization QPSK for Optical Transport Systems by K. Roberts, M. O’Sullivan, K. T. Wu, H. Sun, A. Awadalla, D. J. Krause, & C. Laperle
9. Latest Technology of Optical Transmission System (40G/100G Solutions) Deployed in SMW-4 Submarine Cable Upgrade and the Bandwidth Situation in Bangladesh by Md. Monwar Hossain & Parvez M. Ashraf (published in Teletech 2011)
10. Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (100 G Solution) adopted in SMW-5 Submarine Cable System - What is in the Laboratory for Higher Bandwidth Solution? by Md. Monwar Hossain & Parvez M. Ashraf (published in Teletech 2012)
11. Use of Advanced Optical Transmission Technologies for Redundancy in the Submarine Cable Systems of Bangladesh by Md. Monwar Hossain & Parvez M. Ashraf (published in Teletech 2013)
12. Joining Bangladesh with the Second Submarine Cable (SEA-ME-WE-5) by Md. Monwar Hossain & Parvez M. Ashraf (published in Teletech 2014)
13. Acknowledgment: Mr. Md. Zakirul Alam, DGM (Development), BSCCL for Information & diagrams on SMW-5 Project & Mr. Abdul Wahhab, DGM (IIG), BSCCL for the Information & diagrams on IIG and IP Transit Setups.

________________________________________________________________________

Md. Monwar Hossain: Managing Director, BSCCL

Parvez M. Ashraf: Deputy General Manager (Bandwidth Planning), BSCCL

Use of Advanced Optical Transmission Technologies for Redundancy in the Submarine Cable Systems of Bangladesh

Md. Monwar Hossain                                                                       Parvez M. Ashraf  

Introduction

Broadband internet has become a bare necessity for people of all walks and global

communication has become highly incorporated into our daily life, professional, social or

personal. High rates of bandwidth growth have been forecasted throughout the world as

people today are using numerous features of the web such as browsing, emailing, blogging,

twitting, social networking (such as, facebooking), online gaming, audio/video conferencing,

audio/video streaming, listening to internet radio, watching internet TV, VPN, etc. Meeting

the rapidly increasing demand for capacity in the global and national information

superhighways is a great challenge as ever. Moreover, with the advent of 3G Mobile services

and LTE, people are and will be using their cell phones and mobile devices to get all kinds of

internet  facilities whenever and wherever they want. Thus, it is a great challenge to address

the exponential growth of global bandwidth; and more so to ensure the availability on a 7 x 24

basis, taking into account the natural and manmade calamities that can occur anywhere at

any time.

The transmission technologies today are going through major innovations and developments

to meet up the requirements of redundancy as well as capacity in the core communication

systems and networks. Various products, components and technology solutions are available

today  for strengthening the international core network infrastructure. Telecom  service

providers  are benefited by such technologies in addressing the  bandwidth  requirements as

well as ensuring the  availability  of links and networks. The  solutions or products can be

applied to the whole or parts of the systems according specific requirements, such as cutting

down operating costs, reducing latency, enhancing QoS, reducing complexity, enabling more

protection and restorability, and of course, ensuring redundancy.

Some of the new developments in submarine and terrestrial optical transmission technologies

are briefly described in this article. A number of these features might be implemented with the new submarine cable (for example, SEA-ME-WE-5), Bangladesh has planned to join and also, with the interconnecting submarine cable between the existing and the new one. 

Submarine & Terrestrial Optical  Cable Systems Using Coherent Detection Technology and Integrated on Simplified Architecture

The  global network  of today  is made of both undersea  submarine  and terrestrial network

segments linked together to connect almost all continents of the world.

In the present systems,  a submarine cable would land on the  Cable Landing Station (CLS),

which houses  equipment  pertaining to both  submarine  (or, wet)  and terrestrial  segments.

Usually, the major Point-of-Presence (POP)s would be placed in the terrestrial/metro network,

with a backhaul link running from the CLS to the said POPs. Traditionally, the submarine and

terrestrial systems had adopted different networking architectures and technologies.

However, the inefficient network demarcation point which is typically situated between the

SIE (SDH Interconnection Equipment) and Terrestrial LTE (Line Terminal Equipment) regarding the separation of submarine (wet) and  terrestrial (dry) segments could be  eliminated to facilitate an integrated system of core networking.

Use of relatively new optical transport technologies specially the coherent detection and the

Reconfigurable  Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers  (ROADMs) can  significantly compact  the CLS

network configuration, with most of the remaining functionality and associated equipment

physically relocated into the inland Metro/Terrestrial PoP making it a major data center. This

equipment relocation  can be  made possible  by virtue of the significantly increased

interconnections  offered  by  these two technology products:  coherent  detection and the

photonic switching capabilities of ROADMs.

The proprietary (related to specific vendors) implementation of this  coherent transmission

technology  in DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chipsets typically incorporates other important

functionalities such as Soft Forward Error Correction (soft FEC) which is adjustable for latency

and signal transmission distance according to requirements. This would significantly  increase

achievable distances  for signal transmission. Therefore, it is possible to move  the submarine

wavelength termination point from the CLS to inland  metro PoP, which opens up  new

possibilities for CLS and related designs. Incoming wavelengths from the submarine cable can

be optically switched inland using either fixed filters or flexible ROADMs. ROADMs also offer

remote control feature and is a key enabler of agile photonic networks. Furthermore, keeping

wavelengths in the optical domain for as long as possible reduces latency. The equipment

consumes less power and are of small footprint. Therefore,  the overall operational network

complexity is also reduced and the  global network  simplification and its associated benefits

increases service provider’s  competiveness.  The inefficient submarine-to-terrestrial network

demarcation point is eliminated by relocated SLTE functionality inland while switching

wavelengths from the submarine cable to the inland PoP or the next CLS.

 

SLTE functionality can also be  physically  integrated  with an intelligent switch which will

further eliminate inefficient client-side handoffs between  the  previously distinct  SLTE and

intelligent switches. This simplifies the global network even further by integrating more

traditional CLS functionality directly into the inland PoP;  only the switching of light will be

performed by the Wavelength Selective  Switch (WSS) within the ROADM  and  the  power

management system (PFE & others) will be still  in the CLS. Integrating SLTE functionality into

inland switches running a control plane will prospectively facilitate the formation of intelligent

mesh networks, which ensures bandwidth availability and network connectivity/redundancy.

The result of this convergence is the elimination of the demarcation point between what was

traditionally  been  referred to as  the  “submarine” and “terrestrial” networks. The ability to

seamlessly interconnect networks overland and undersea helps  to  achieve global networks

that are simpler to design, manage, and maintain. Also, end-to-end network security is much

strengthened as the traffic is carried in the optical domain from PoPs to PoPs, specially when

coherent transmission technology is used, as it is far harder to tap and decode when

compared to network nodes that allow for access to traffic in the electrical domain. The SLTE

relocated directly into the inland PoP  could be  easier to manage and protect  in general as

compared to a CLS physically located in a rather sparsely populated and remote beach area or coastline location.

Evolution of Network Intelligence and the Control Plane

The control plane  functions as the brain of an intelligent network which  autonomously

maintains an accurate database of all network resources to decide on the optimal connection.

It is essentially comprised of special hardware and software that make a self-aware network.

Traditional networks employ centralized intelligence, or network management software  that

runs on  an external workstation for connection management.  Networks with  intelligent

control planes  possess a sort of  nervous system through which connection management is

autonomously performed by the network itself, within predefined conditions. Connections are

autonomously created and deleted via machine-to-machine signaling and routing protocols.

However, a  mesh network governed by intelligent control  plane technology will  make

connection management, protection, and restoration decisions based on the policies created

by human operators and  the network operator is in complete control of an intelligent mesh

network at all times, although connections are autonomously created and deleted.  This

fundamental paradigm  shift in connection management, from an external centralized model

to an  internal decentralized model, brings network operators  some important advantages in

terms of rapid service provision. Significant savings in capital and operational expenditures are

made possible.

Technology Advancement through DWDM Modulation Techniques & PM-QPSK

The optical line terminal equipments of the present and near future need to be able to handle

very high speed traffic transported to a long distance. Advanced optical network technologies  

such as Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) form the  foundation for

communications infrastructures of today, enabling worldwide traffic aggregation and metro

and regional network consolidation. Because of the notable technical developments on the

DWDM components, it can be said that DWDM approaches have surpassed the time division

multiplexing (TDM) for the high speed transmission over long distance which can be even on a

single fiber instead of a pair of fibers for transmission and reception with a specific terminal.

The key breakthrough factor of the solution has been the coherent receiver. For the past

three decades or so, optical system receivers have been working by detection of the

transmitted signal’s intensity with on-off keying.

The bit-rate of a channel can be described as the simple product of the baud rate or symbol-

rate, bits per symbol and the number of carriers used. Recent commercial coherent systems at

40 Gbps and 100 Gbps have exploited all of these dimensions. The technology that made this

100 G transmission possible is Polarization Multiplexed QPSK modulation  (PM-QPSK) with a

coherent receiver. Modulation is required to ensure propagation, to perform multiple

accesses and to enhance the SNR, as well as to achieve bandwidth compression.  PM-QPSK

modulation technique would decrease the baud or symbol rate of the system, using four bits

per symbol, keeping the optical spectrum four times narrower than the unreduced baud rate.

Because of the capability to pass through multiple Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (OADMs)

and its practical PMD (Polarization Mode Dispersion) tolerance, PM-QPSK is recognized as a

viable format for deployment within 50GHz-spaced systems. The present “state of the art” for

DWDM in 2012 or 2013 may be still 100 Gbps. However, the growth in the internet has

created requirement for new scale for bandwidth and that is preferably without adding any

more complexity to the operations. It is clear that for a high capacity network beyond the

100G, in addition to a move toward larger, more powerful transport switches, the

mechanisms of DWDM optical transmission may have to change.

Technology of ROADM

Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) are to deliver new flexibility to

DWDM networks by enabling dynamic, transparent optical wavelength add/drop functioning.  

ROADMs add considerable agility and robustness to network architectures, vastly improving

service and lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). ROADM Technology delivers greater

flexibility and cost  savings on optical transport platforms and enables add/drop  of optical

channels anywhere within an optical network linear  span or ring. These channels can be

wavelengths with any bandwidth  rate  2.5, 10, and 40 Gbps currently; 100 Gbps. ROADM

technology also allows traffic to pass through a network  location transparently in the optical

domain without Optical Electrical-Optical (OEO) conversions, as shown in Figure 1. ROADMs

ease the planning process for DWDM-based networks by allowing the addition, removal, or

modification  of one or more wavelength  channels within a network  automatically, with

minimal user  intervention. Thus, the new ROADM technology are now-a-days used to design

flexible and efficient branching units used in large submarine cable systems.

Application of new Technologies in the Consortium Submarine Cable

Existing SMW-4 cable is the only submarine cable that has kept Bangladesh connected with

the international information superhighway. Due to any calamity or other reasons, if this

cable gets  into any kind of physical damage or disruption, country’s international long

distance telecommunication would suffer badly. That’s why Bangladesh has been working for

long to acquire a second submarine cable so that the international links can be maintained

without outage.

It is expected that Bangladesh would join a consortium submarine cable. The prospective

submarine cable would be built using high capacity handling DWDM and Coherent detection

technology, and highly flexible ROADM. Depending on the supplier’s equipment, it is likely

that sophisticated intelligent control plane technology will be implemented.

Bangladesh will join as a branch party to this submarine cable. While the cost per party will

depend on various factors, the cost can be reduced if the branch can be shared with another

party. There is a possibility that Myanmar might  join  the Consortium  and share the branch

cable with Bangladesh. In that case, Bangladesh could save as much as 10 million US Dollars.

The “Branch on Branch” architecture for Branch sharing  might  be implemented in various

ways. Some typical situations are as given in the figures (Fig.2, 3 & 4):

Interconnecting Submarine Cable Between the Landing Stations  and DWDM Transmission Backbone

A plan has been made to interconnect the two submarine cable systems through another

submarine cable. In this way, the two landing stations Cox’s Bazar (for SMW-4) and Kuakata

(proposed for the second submarine cable) would get interlinked.

The estimated length of this link would be 235 Km. It would be made of 2 (two) fiber pairs

with an initial capacity of 100 Gbps/per fiber pair and 16 Tbps as design capacity. The

modulation scheme to be used: PM-QPSK (Polarization Multiplexed- Quadrature Phase Shift

Keying). Other important feature is this submarine cable would be a repeater less system with

a design life of about 25 years.  

The Interconnecting Submarine cable is shown in Fig.5

Fig.5: Proposed Interconnecting Submarine Cable Between the Two Landing Stations: Kuakata and Cox’s Bazar

The two submarine cable systems will also be interconnected through a terrestrial  DWDM

backbone, shown in Fig.6

Therefore, interconnection through both the Submarine Cable and Terrestrial Systems will

ensure the strong security and redundancy in the Submarine Cable Infrastructure of Bangladesh which will keep the core communication infrastructure seamlessly connected to the Information Superhighway.

References

1.  Optical Fiber Telecommunications part V- vol. B (Systems and Networks) edited by I. P.

Kaminow,T. Li & A. E. Willner

2.  Fiber Optics Engineering by M. Azadeh

3.  Performance of Dual-Polarization QPSK for Optical Transport Systems by K. Roberts, M.

O’Sullivan, K. T. Wu, H. Sun, A. Awadalla, D. J. Krause, & C. Laperle

4.  Digital Coherent Receiver Technology for 100 Gb/s Optical Transport Systems by J. C.

Rasmussen, T. Hoshida & H. Nakashima

5.  Introduction to DWDM Technology by Cisco Systems

6.  Optical Internetworking Forum: http://www.oiforum.com/

7.  Suboptic Forum: www.suboptic.org

8.  www.huaweimarine.com

9.  www.alcatel-lucent.com/submarine/

10. www.infinera.com

11. Latest Technology of Optical Transmission System (40G/100G Solutions) Deployed in

SMW-4 Submarine Cable Upgrade and the Bandwidth Situation in Bangladesh by Md.

Monwar Hossain & Parvez M. Ashraf (published in Teletech 2011)
________________________________________________________________________

Md. Monwar Hossain: Managing Director, BSCCL
Parvez M. Ashraf: Deputy General Manager (Bandwidth Planning), BSCCL

ACCESS TO DIGITAL MAGIC : ROLE OF MoPT

Eng. Sheikh Reaz Ahmed*


To become a middle income country by 2021, the Government of Bangladesh declared the ‘Vision 2021’ and is committed to ensure universal Telecommunications and ICT services to the door-steps of it’s citizens.
Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication (MoPT) plays an active and potential role in realizing the dream of “Digital Bangladesh” through achieving “vision-2021”. Connectivity brings everything within the grip of a citizen and makes the life easy, accessible and affordable. The people of rural and urban irrespective of rich and poor have got the same opportunity to enjoy such facility from near and far end. Home is popularly being used now-a-days as an office in many countries. Most of the work is easily being accomplished from any corner of the universe. Connectivity squeezed our tension and curiosity through prompt and effective way of knowing & transporting any desire things. This article intends to give a snapshot of the comprehensive activities of the ministry of Posts & Telecommunications (MoPT) which is primarily responsible for providing postal and Telecommunication services to the mass people of the country. MoPT is responsible to create and maintain a harmonic environment through policy formulation and enforce them in the field of Posts and Telecommunications. The role of the ministry is to create a level playing field for all market players including the private sectors in telecom and postal services. During the past four and half years the ministry proved itself as a unit of the Governance in providing the most essential citizen services, the highest revenue earning sector, a key enabler of the  economic development and also the highest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) attracting sector. Last year about 60% of total FDI investment in the country was in the telecom sector, which is a remarkable success of MoPT. Formulation of Policy, Rules and Regulations for the Posts and Telecommunications sector are the basic tasks of the ministry. The ministry has also taken an initiative to formulate an effective telecom policy with the help of ITU, stakeholders and Policy think tanks. The MoPT formulated the Broadband Policy-2009 and International Long Distance Telecommunication Service (ILDTS) Policy -2010. The MoPT is processing a number of rules and regulations to make the telecom market more dynamic, competitive and people oriented. Some of them are Significant Market Power (SMP) Regulations, Social Obligation Fund (SOF) Rules and Telecommunication Licensing Regulations. The licensing of telecommunication services and tariff approvals are now the responsibility of the MoPT. With the proposal of BTRC, the ministry finalized and approved the regulatory and licensing guidelines for renewal of existing Mobile Operator’s, International Terrestrial Cable (ITC), International Gateway (IGW), Interconnection Exchange (ICX), International Internet Gateway (IIG), National Internet Exchange (NIX) and VoIP Service Provider (VSP). At present most of the critical decisions are being made in consultation with the stakeholders and citizen representatives.The MoPT achieves its goal and enforces Government’s policy through the accumulated performance of its 7organizations : one is regulatory commission-

• Bangladesh Telecommunication RegulatoryCommission (BTRC), one is its attached department 
• Bangladesh Post Office (BPO), 5 other government owned public limited companies such as 
• Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd. (BTCL),
• Bangladesh Submarine Cable Co. Ltd (BSCCL), 
• Bangladesh Cable Shilpa Ltd.(BCS), 
• Telephone Shilpa Sangstha (TSS) and 
• Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd. (Teletalk). 
• 
  

The officials of MoPT follows the lattest “Rules of Business” of the Government in performing all of its activities. MoPT has successfully been maintained telecom operators to provide triple play services such as voice, video and data services. There are

• 8 PSTN active operators, 
• 6 PLMN operators 

and lot of ISP in the country to provide these services. To boost up the competition in the market and to increase the capacity of the local entrepreneurs the Government issued more licenses for ICX, IGW and IIG following "International Long Distance Telecommunication Services (ILDTS) Policy 2010". Moreover, VoIP Service Provider (VSP) license, a new category of license for international voice call termination is also created. At present there are

• 28 IGW Licenses, 
• 27 ICX Licenses, 
• 36 IIG Licenses and 
• 841 VSP Licenses 

for making a transparent and competitive services.

MoPT is keeping its presence through active participation at various programs of ITU (International Telecommunication Union) and UPU (Universal Postal Union) and performs various types of telecom and postal activities in compliance with the constitutions and decisions of ITU and UPU. Bangladesh has elected as one of the council member of ITU in 2009 for the period of 2010-2014 which reflects the level of international collaboration of the country in the field of Telecommunication. Besides ITU and UPU, the MoPT maintains close contact with GSM Association (GSMA), Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT), Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO), Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Asian Pacific Postal Union (APPU) and various global, regional and sub-regional telecom and Postal forums and groups.


Through proper intervention of our present minister, overseas Incoming call minutes have drastically increased at 40 million minutes per day. Now the total PSTN subscriber is 10,28,190; the penetration rate is 0.67%, the total mobile subscriber is 9,98,70,627; the penetration rate is 65.48% and the total Internet subscriber is 3,18,01,345; the penetration rate is 20.85%. The government has taken initiatives to reduce
the tariff rates of voice calls and internet usage. As a part of the initiative of cheaper internet connectivity, the price for bandwidth has been reduced substantially. At present the internet bandwidth is as low as maximum BDT 8,000 per Mbps while in 2009 it was BDT 27,000. It is proposed to reduce this rate at BDT 4,800 per Mbps. Though ITU has yet not been fixed the speed of bandwidth and different country has defined its bandwidth at different speed like 128 Kbps,256 Kbps and 512 Kbps but MoPT has taken a wonderful decision to define its broadband at a speed of 1 Mbps.

BANGABANDHU SATELLITE : Considering the necessity, market demand as well as keeping the prestige of the country in the telecom world, MoPT realized to launch its own Satellite and took initiative through BTRC. BTRC is approaching with a consulting based project “Preparatory Functions and Supervision in Launching a Communication
and Broadcasting Satellite” and the consultant for launching the satellite has already been appointed. Bangladesh has filed its claim to ITU for its own orbit. At the same time work is going on to rent out other’s
orbit in case any complexity arise for own orbit. Floating of tender, funding of about Tk.3000 crore, selection of orbital slot will be finalized very soon. It will be the first satellite of the country having 40 transponders (16 of C band and 24 of Ku band). Hopefully Bangladesh will have its own satellite named as “BANGABANDHU SATELLITE ” by 2015.

BTCL : Under the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications BTCL (Former Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board) has been serving as the first PSTN operator in the country. BTCL has a mandate to of the country, down to upazila (thana) and growth centre level. Most of them can also use dial-up internet service. BTCL has the largest telecom infrastructure comprising of TDM and IP networks etc. It has also ISP operation which is the largest in the country. ADSL Broadband internet service is available now with the capacity of 48 thousands. BTCL has taken several projects to develop the telecom infrastructure throughout the country. It is going to install fiber optic network upto the root level of the country i.e union level to give last mile solution to it’s subscriber. Work is also going on under BTCL for commissioning 2,39,000 lines NGN based integrated telephone system through which triple play i.e. Voice, Video and Data connectivity can be provided to the subscribers through a single line. Bangladesh was the first South Asian country to adopt cellular mobile having AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System) technology in the period 1989-1993 through it’s private operator CityCell. Due to limited network coverage and exorbitant high subscription charge and call rate number of subscriber was very limited. In 1996, three more GSM licenses were awarded aimed at breaking the monopoly and making the cellular technology affordable to the general masses. At present, total number of mobile operator is 6(Six) including the Government owned operator “Teletalk”. The mobile communications sector in Bangladesh is one of the fastest growingindustry which boost up the economic and social development in the country. The mobile phone sector has also ensured the availability of data enabling services across the country.

provide basic telecommunication services throughout the country. It is now providing telephone service to about 1 million subscribers

switches, copper cables, microwave links, satellite earth stations and optical fiber

Mobile internet and voice facility has helped to bridge the digital divide between people with access to information and services. The contributions of Grameen Phone Ltd. (GP), Banglalink, Robi and Airtel are prudently appreciable in booming the mobile industry of the country.

Teletalk Bangladesh Limited (TBL)  : Besides the private operators,Teletalk Bangladesh Limited (TBL) which is a public limited company under MoPT is playing a vital role to Teletalk is continuing its network expansion to reach more corners of the country. It had already established its network in 64 Districts, 420 Upazilas including 25 critical Upazilas of the hill tracts and most of the highways. Teletalk is solely going to establish mobile connectivity at Sundarban and surroundings deep sea in the southern part of the country. Last year the government allowed Teletalk to launch 3G Services for commercial testing. 3G enabled subscribers availing the facilities of mobile TV, high speed internet, video conferencing and lot of value added services. To liberalize and encourage more operators in providing 3G services the licensing guideline has already

provide universal services and market stabilization .
been approved by MoPT. Hopefully within this year 3G service will be available and affordable throughout the country with the inception of other operators activities. The licensed ISP organizations having categories as "Nationwide ISP License" and "Zonal ISP License” are providing Internet services throughout the country. In order to spread the internet facilities into the rural areas of Bangladesh, MoPT has been working hand in hand with the ISP organizations. To reduce the infrastructure cost of the ISPs several initiatives including transmission cost has been reducted. Internet Protocol Telephony Service Provider (IPTSP) Licenses have been awarded to a number of ISP licensees. For the convenience of the ISP licensees the ministry has approved the licensing guideline for National Internet Exchange (NIX) which is the neutral meeting point of the ISPs. NIX is required to route domestic internet traffic which will save the mis-use of international bandwidth and foreign currency.

The metropolitan cities and district towns once were cluttered with hazardous overhead optical fiber/cables and the optical fiber/wired networks have been laid independently by the multiple ANS operators
caused huge wastage of the national resources. Therefore, Licenses had given for Nationwide Optical Fiber Telecommunication Transmission Network to Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) and Nationwide Telecommunication Transmission Network (NTTN) licenses to Fiber@Home and Sumit
Communications to build and maintain a common telecom transmission network across the country. Between the two categories, PGCB is providing transmission network by installing Optical Ground Wire (OPGW) on high voltage transmission line whereas the NTTN licensees are building a nationwide underground optical fiber transmission backbone and create a platform for National Information Highway.

The number of such operators may increase in near future as the ministry is amending the licensing guideline with the recommendation of BTRC.

Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) : Under MoPT, Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) is an International Submarine Cable Operator of the country. BSCCL provides the Long-haul communication between Bangladesh and the rest of the world. BSCCL is a party onbehalf of Bangladesh in the SEA-ME-WE-4 ( South East Asia-Middle East-Western WORLD TELECOMMUNICATION ANDINFORMATION SOCIETY DAY 2013 23 Europe-4) submarine cable and represents the Nation in the SMW-4 international cable consortium. BSCCL has become a member of the newly formed SMW-5 Consortium and the said Submarine Cable will provide more capacity i.e 700 Gbps and acts as redundant. BSCCL will soon start operations as IIG (International Internet Gateway) which will help the people to get broadband Internet with cheaper rate and better quality of service. It has a Co-location Center at it’s landing station “Cox’s bazar”. The people of Bangladesh have been connected to the "Information Super Highway" by using this high capacity fiber optic submarine cable bandwidth. BSCCL is playing a major role with its present capacity of 200 Gbps, though the usage is only 30Gbps. India, Nepal, Mynmar, Bhutan is continuously keeping contact with us for renting our bandwidth capacity.

Telephone Shilpa Sangstha Ltd. (TSS) is a state owned public limited company was established in 1967 as a private limited company to manufacture analog type EMD telephone exchange equipments and
different types of telephone sets. But for demand of the age, TSS management took initiatives to diversify its activities and established four assembling/manufacturing units as

1. Manufacturing/Assembling plant for PSTN land telephone sets.
2. Manufacturing Plant for Mobile Phone Battery.
3. Manufacturing Plant for Mobile Phone Battery Charger and
4. Assembling Plant for Digital Electric Meter.

To cherish the dream of "Digita Bangladesh". It is assembling/manufacturing Laptop/ Notebook and the people can buy Laptop/Notebook at a competitive lower price. It also has a proposal for manufacturing Maintenance Free VLRA Battery and other types of Battery which can be used to run mobile equipments. TSS is a well-known and long reputed supplier/assembler of Digital PABX of different brands. It also supplied and installed the Optical Network Unit (ONU) and related equipment at different exchanges of BTCL. Bangladesh Cable Shilpa Limited (BCSL) under MoPT was established with joint collaboration of the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh (through the Bangladesh Telegraph & Telephone Board, now BTCL) and M/s Siemens Aktiengesellschaft of West Germany in 1967 with a target of manufacturing Telecommunication cables & drop wires in the country. BCSL can produce different types of cables (telephone copper cables & drop wires and optical fiber cables). BCSL can maintain the quality of products as per Customer demand & satisfaction with many high speed and sophisticated computerized machineries including cable testing equipments. The only Optical Fiber Cable Manufacturing Plant in BCS is producing various types of optical fiber cables like aerial, duct, buried & from 2 fibers to 216 fibers (Armoured and Non-Armoured), maintaining high and world standard quality with imported high quality raw materials. Using its huge infra-structure, BCS is now thinking to produce power cable of various grade to meet the demand of the country. Bangladesh is going to launch its own satellite named as “Bangabandhu Satellite” in the orbit like other modern and enlightened nations. Bangladesh being a sovereign country having sustainable development needs its own satellite in order to reduce its dependency on other nations. Bangladesh of its unique geographical location often faced to natural disaster risk and its telecommunication system has always been suffering from interruption. Satellite network can play an important role in ensuring uninterrupted telecommunication services in the country. The satellite network has a significant advantages over terrestrial network in ensuring high-level of communication redundancy. on the other hand with its own satellite network, Bangladesh can save a significant amount of foreign currency paid as the transponder rental charge. Bangladesh had a long cherished dream of having its own communication satellite which will ensure improved connectivity with rest of the world.

Bangladesh Post Office: Another role is being played by the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications in catering and fulfilling the postal needs of the people of the country through its attached department “Bangladesh Post Office (BPO)”. BPO is the premier national postal communication service provider dedicated to provide wide range of postal products and public services to a large population through its 9,886 post offices. BPO is committed to provide a speedy, reliable and regular services to the people of all walks of life at a reasonable cost. Post e-center at each of the 8500 rural post offices of the country bridge digital divide between the rural and urban people of the country by enabling them to have access to modern ICT based technologies. Electronic Money Transfer Service (EMTS) was commercially launched at 2750 post offices throughout the country including all district and Upazila Post Offices. Guaranteed Express Post (GEP) service is familiar at all Upazilla.BPO is automating the activities of 134 offices including 71 Head Post Offices and 13 Main and Sorting Offices through a project “Process Automaton of Postal Department”. Postal Cash Card service is initiated in all posts offices of the country which will minimize the risk of carrying cash in hand and will enable customers to reap the benefit of encashment and remittance in post office counters and Automated Teller Machine (ATM) booths on the other hand. This card may also act equally as Debit Card, Credit Card and Plastic money. The introduction of IPS light (International Postal System Software),Global Monitoring System (GMS) & nternet based on line Enquiry System (IBIS) for tracking and tracing the posted materials movement have built the confidence to the people. The special SIM Cards having both Voice Call and Employees Reimbursement  ystem (ERS) facilities have been distributed among 8217 Extra Departmental Agents of Bangladesh Post Office to enabling staffs of the department to increase their income significantly. The vision of theGovernment is to establish a democratic, poverty free, knowledge based society by using Telecommunications and ICTs. The government is keen to implement e-education, e-health, e-commerce, e-agriculture etc. by establishing strong Telecommunications infrastructures. Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications along with its associated organizations including private operators are trying extremly to make ICTs and elecommunications services affordable and available to every citizen. The MoPT is dedicated to serve the nation by providing universal access to the Telecommunications facilities.