Unreliable connectivity


Posted on November 14, 2006  /  1 Comments

Why BPOs insist on route and supplier redundancy.

:: bdnews24.com ::

Dhaka, Nov 13 (bdnews24.com) – A suspected act of sabotage derailed telecommunications transmission optical fibre cable links between Dhaka and Chittagong Monday night.Submarine cable subscribers in Dhaka got disconnected at 7:30pm.

Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board rushed a maintenance team to the spot on the outskirts of Comilla town but failed to put the connection back on.

A senior official told bdnews24.com that the BTTB suspected the cable cut was an “act of sabotage”.

”There is no maintenance work of the Roads and Highways Division in the area which is generally the primary cause of such cable cuts,” he said in support of his argument.

”We cannot repair the cable in the night as we don’t have enough workers.”

BTTB has approximately 17,000 employees.

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  1. Dhaka, Nov 14 (bdnews24.com) – The Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board restored its international voice and data services at 6:00 am Tuesday after 11 hours of shutdown, official sources said.

    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.