But the state-owned telecommunications company will not take action against the persons responsible for the damage, they said.

BTTB’s Dhaka-Chittagong optical fibre transmission link was cut at 7:00pm Monday and initially it was suspected to be an act of sabotage.

But a prompt move by the authorities revealed that a contractor tied with private mobile phone company Banglalink has damaged the cable while laying another optical fibre link at the same place.

M/S M Brothers, the Banglalink contractor, has chopped BTTB’s cable at three places in the BTTB’s trench on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway — 7.5 kilometres east of Comilla, the investigation revealed.

The BTTB international gateway exchanges in Dhaka got disconnected from the submarine cable system, which was terminated at Cox’s Bazar. As a result, BTTB’s most international voice circuits went out of order.

The state-owned company has managed to keep few international voice circuits active through its backup satellite links. But its data service customers remained disconnected until the damage was repaired Tuesday morning.

BTTB is assessing the revenue it has lost to the shutdown of its vital transmission backbone.

“In future for such damage BTTB will claim compensation,” said a BTTB letter to Banglalink’s managing director Tuesday.

Banglalink Director Omar Rashid said: “We have received a complaint from the BTTB. But we are yet to get confirmed if the contractor belonged to us or to AKTEL.”

Sources said GrameenPhone and AKTEL earlier damaged BTTB’s optical fibre cable.

But no compensation was demanded from them. “Former BTTB officials who are working in the private telecoms industry manipulate the “higher level” of the government and getaway,” an official said on condition of anonymity.