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. 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.

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. At the beginning of 2018, there were about 450 submarine cables in service across the globe extending for more than 1..Traversing the sea bed, fibre-optic submarine communication cables carry telecommunication signals across continents, oceans and seas.2 million km in total length.”

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.New Delhi: 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.

In an address during a meet on “Act East” policy held in the national capital on Friday, Mr Sonowal said: “India has only two China lawn mower throttle cable factory 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.“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.

aStarting 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.Besides individuals and governments, users of fibre optic cable links include telecom carriers, mobile operators, multinational corporations, content providers etc.According to figures given out by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, 97 per cent of all intercontinental data is carried via such cables