The price of Bandwidth has been trimmed by 41 per cent Dhaka, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar. Now the internet gateways will pay Tk 625 instead of Tk 1,068 for 1 MBPS bandwidth, and the price will be effective from September 1.
The reduced prices would be applicable for 10 GBPS (Gigabyte Per Second) slab. But, it is up to the International internet gateways (IIGS) and internet service providers (ISPs) to cut price at the end user’s level. The major buyers of the bandwidth are mobile phone operators, PSTN, WiMax operators and ISP. Internet users are gradually seeing the effect of declining price of bandwidth, claims Bangladesh Tele-communication Regulatory Commission (BTRC). At present it costs Tk 125 to buy 1Gbps internet data. In 2008, people had to spend Tk 27,000 to buy 1GBPS data, which is now available at Tk 2,800, a 90 per cent reduction in price. Also data price has been reduced by 30 per cent during last 1 year. Although the price of bandwidth has declined, service providers are not lowering the cost at subscribers level. In other areas of the capital users can get line at Tk 500 with low speed which sparks dissatisfactions. BTRC said it is documented after analyzing various data that average price of per Gbps data of the state-run mobile operator Tele talk has declined by 50 per cent within a year. According to BTRC statistics, users of mobile internet have increased by 10.48 million in a year until June this year to 48.34 million.