Mango Teleservices Limited, the country’s first international internet gateway (IIG) service provider, is to start its operations by the end of this month.

"We are planning to start operations from June 25," said A Mannan Khan, chairman of Mango Teleservices Ltd.

IIG is a system that works to exchange international internet-based data traffic besides working as a national internet exchange (NIX) for, exchanging national internet based data traffic.

In the first phase, two access points, or point of presence, are being set up in Dhaka and Chittagong.

"Physical implementation of our Dhaka access point is complete and it will be operational by June 15 and the other by the end of this month,” he added.

Mango Teleservices has chosen Cisco, the worldwide leader in networking, as its technology solution provider.

"We are extremely pleased to be a part of Bangladesh’s first private IIG. Our goal is to deliver the most advanced network infrastructure that enables Mango to roll out services to customers," said Vikas Kumar, regional manager. Service Provider, North & East, Cisco.

“We believe the data market in Bangladesh will grow like the mobile market and expect a 7/8 times growth in the IP backbone requirement within the next five years,” Kumar said.

Both Mango and Cisco welcome the recent reduction in bandwidth prices and believe that it will definitely help increase the internet penetration of the country.