ICT revolution
Thank you very much for your interview-based article on the "High Internet Tariff" in today's (17/dec/07) Star Business Page. This is a long-standing issue which needs mass awareness and campaign to make Internet a commodity for the public and businesses in Bangladesh. Internet is a global phenomenon in this highly interconnected world. It is in fact a boon to LDCs like us, which can catalyse our developments and exports growth. As the BASIS President aptly put High Internet Pricing is seriously holding back our ICT exports growth in Bangladesh.
As we evidenced with the booming RMG exports, many related businesses in the RMG Value Chain grew with the main RMG businesses. A countrywide ICT services export growth will also trigger similar patterns in our economy. But we must ensure the highest Internet connection reliability and significantly lower bandwidth prices for that. We simply cannot remain 15 to 20 times higher in Bandwidth pricing than the Indian Bandwidth pricing. We must make that lower than India's to attract foreign businesses.
We should treat this Internet & related Fibre-Optic-Network Bandwidth price reduction as a long term investment for our country. With heavily reduced prices, the Internet will be all pervasive among most of the young population of our country. Our educational institutes and young students can use the Internet as a great R&D and knowledge platform.
We have opportunities in ICT R&D, where skilled HR is the main factor. We missed the Industrial Revolution. We cannot afford to miss the ongoing Global ICT revolution.
Success stories are always characterized by a combination of visionary leadership, determination, sensible government policy, effective coordination and cooperation across a range of industry stakeholders, prudent risk taking by the powerful ones, and a lot of hard work. In fine, we must act now with a strong commitment to succeeding in the long term by 'commoditising' the Internet with very low pricing.
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