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Faster internet beckons unions

Govt to take the technology to vast rural areas by December

Rejaul Karim Byron
A new project of the government seeks to connect the country's vast rural areas with high-speed Internet connection by December 2013.
The government will invest Tk 719 crore across Bangladesh to link 1,006 unions to the Internet.
The unions, located at strategic places in the seven divisions, will relay the network facilities to adjacent unions and villages and provide rural people with access to high-speed Internet connection.
Meanwhile, a related project that seeks to revive postal services will convert all 8,500 post offices in Bangladesh into electronic post offices by June 2015.
The “post e-centres” will provide postal services, money transfer facilities and a variety of information on technology-based services.
The Optical Fibre Cable Network Development Project at the Union Parishads and the Post e-centre for Rural Community Project were approved at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) yesterday. The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
After the Ecnec meeting. Planning Minister AK Khandker told journalists that both projects would be implemented with the government's own resources.
He said the Tk 541 -crore e-post project would “infuse new life into the near-dead traditional postal services."
The optical fibre project will have 1,006 unions across 64 districts connected to the 11,060-kilometre network spread throughout the country.
There are about 4,500 unions in the country.
Currently, rural people can connect to the Internet only through the wireless networks of telecom companies. The wireless Internet is often erratic, slow and unavailable in many remote areas.
The initiative will link the rural areas to the network, which will offer uninterrupted and high-speed Internet services.
The project proposal says that the government has already issued directives to Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Ltd (BTCL) about bringing all unions of the country under an optical fibre network within three years.
The minister said when the e-centres come into operation, expatriate Bangladeshis will be able to contact and send money from anywhere in the world to their relatives within seconds. The relatives will have to open accounts at the e-centres to avail the service.
The project proposal says that people from remote areas would have facilities to see and talk to their expatriate relatives via webcams at the e-centres.
The post offices will also serve as digital photo studios. They will be able to help rural students receive examination results, and provide farmers with information about agricultural products.
A high official of the planning ministry said the two projects had been taken up to fulfil the present government's election promise to build a digital Bangladesh by2021.
Ecnec also okayed four other projects involving Tk 547 crore. Among the projects is a seed development farm in the southern coastal area.