In order to harness the infotech potential of the Northeast and to make the region an IT hub, Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal has sought terrestrial cable-linking of the region with Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar rather than rely on the cable connectivity with Mumbai and Chennai.The proposed move may hugely enhance Internet speed in the Northeast and allow more IT-enabled industries, including call centres, to be set up in the region, that already has a sizeable English-speaking population.In an address during a meet on “Act East” policy held in the national capital on Friday, Mr Sonowal said: “India has only two landing stations of the international submarine fibre-optic cable network, which are located at Mumbai and Chennai; both of which are far from Northeast India.
On the other hand, due to geographical closeness, the northeastern region can have better access of the network from Cox Bazaar landing station in Bangladesh.”The Cox’s Bazaar Internet gateway has already been accessed by India’s state-run BSNL but the bandwidth has not been brought to Assam and other northeastern states due to high rental costs.“If government of India can consider supporting BSNL in payment of rentals for initial few years, the region would be able to get the requisite high speed connectivity and bandwidth from Cox Bazar to become an IT hub,” the CM added.Traversing the sea bed, fibre-optic submarine communication cables carry telecommunication signals across continents, oceans and seas. Starting in the 1850s when the cables carried largely traffic for telegraph, and then progressing to telephony and data communications traffic, nowadays the fibre-optic cables carry digital data, which includes telephone, Internet and private data traffic.
According to figures given out by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, 97 per cent of all intercontinental data is carried via such cables. At the beginning of 2018, there were about 450 submarine cables in service across the globe extending for more than 1.2 million km in total length.While thousands of communication satellites are deployed in space, when it comes to Internet connectivity, cables are far more preferred than satellite links because space communications is time consuming and very costly as compared with latest fibre-optic submarine links that can transmit data at almost the speed of light.Besides individuals and governments, users of fibre optic cable links include telecom carriers, mobile operators, multinational corporations, content providers etc.
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