The government plans to award licence to GrameenPhone (GP) to operate Chittagong-Cox’s Bazar optic fibre network by April, in a move to give a further boost to the country’s telecom sector, officials said.
The mobile telephony titan is sure to win the bid to lease the 145-kilomtre-long optic-fibre network, owned by Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB), beating two bidders, they said.
"The licence to operate the network awaits approval from the telecom regulator," a PGCB official said Sunday.
"The GP has become the highest bidder. If the BTRC (Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission) gives its nod, we’ll sign the deal with it by the end of next month," the official told The Financial Express.
Countrywide, the PGCB has nearly 4000 km of optic fibre lines and GrameenPhone has already leased the PGCB’s Dhaka-Chittagong network spanning 248-kilometres. But the grid operator uses only 10 per cent of its capacity, leaving almost 90 per cent unutilised.
Sources said although awarded to a single company, GP is obliged to transfer 30 per cent of its capacity to other interested players according to the contract.
"The award will allow the lessee to use the OFC for transmitting telecom signal from one terminal point to other along the network for own use or for sub-leasing the bandwidth to others," an official said.
Experts say the grid operator’s decision to lease out its unused capacity to the telecommunication service providers will revolutionise the local information technology sector, still struggling to catch up with that of neighbouring countries.
GP will pay Tk 5.9 million as yearly royalty to the PGCB for the Chittagong-Cox’s Bazar network, while it is paying Tk 35 million for the Dhaka-Chittagong route.
The government, however, had decided to lease out a portion of the optical fibre line to the BTTB to use Dhaka-Chittagong network with the same terms and conditions.
Three bidders, including Concord Group, joined the fray for Chittagong-Cox’s Bazar lines, while four private telephone operators submitted their bid proposals to obtain the licence for using the unutilised Dhaka-Chittagong corridor of the PGCB, a concern of the Power Development Board (PDB).
The bidders that jumped on the bidding train included the GrameenPhone, AKTEL, Concord Group and Bangladesh Rural Telecommunications Limited.
Officials said the PGCB’s optic fibre cable entailed lower installation costs, negligible maintenance cost compared to buried cable, and high bandwidth facility.
The PGCB has built an overhead fibre optic network along its high voltage electricity transmission lines.
The grid operator has installed about 450 kms of fibre optic line network over its power grid line on Dhaka-Chittagong highway with a plan to expand the existing line’s length to 2,100 km by 2010.
Currently, the PGCB can use only 10 per cent of the optical fibre network capacity.
Officials said the optical fibre network of the company is robust, noise-free, and its reliability hovers at 99.98 per cent.
Established in 1996 as a functional unit under the power sector reform programme, the PGCB oversees the operation, maintenance and expansion of the high-voltage power transmission network in the country.