The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Bhutan is moving closer to establishing its 3rd International Internet Gateway (3IIG) following an agreement between Bhutan Telecom and India’s Airtel, supported by a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Bangladesh, says GovTech. The agency has also achieved and is enhancing efforts to improve connectivity.
This came during Government Technology’s (GovTech Agency) presentation on the Mid-term review of the 13th Five-Year Plan (FYP).
Internet connectivity was one of the main achievements of the GovTech Agency. The agency presented achieving milestones in improving and strengthening governmental connectivity and improving fiber redundancy in the national telecom infrastructure.
The agency also stated that it is currently looking into the establishment of a 3rd International Internet Gateway (3IIG).
These activities would be instrumental in advancing Bhutan’s connectivity goals while catching up to global standards as the world becomes more digital.
GovTech presented that Bhutan Telecom Limited (BTL) and Indian telecommunications company Airtel have established an agreement to implement a 3rd internet gateway.
The agency said that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Royal Government of Bhutan and the Government of Bangladesh has also been signed to facilitate a link.
Consecutively, a triparty meeting between BTL, Airtel and the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) was held to foster a discussion.
One of the mentioned achievements was building a secure and resilient connectivity. The agency said that it is currently upgrading the core network for the government networks from 10G to 100/400G.
This means that government services will be faster and much more effective.
The agency is also looking into improving fiber redundancy and national telecom infrastructure.
Enhancement of the uptime of the national Fiber optic backbone network is being studied. It is an attempt in making the system immune to blackouts by building alternative paths so that there is no disruption in the flow of data.
The agency is also stepping into efforts for providing affordable connectivity.
Tender document preparation is currently ongoing for the bulk bandwidth procurement through IRU mechanism under the ACCESS project, meaning that the government may secure a high-speed bandwidth at a much lower long-term cost.
The agency plans to improve accessibility of the internet through Fiber to the home (FTTH).
FTTH is the installation of optical fibers from a central point to individual buildings to provide high-speed internet access. Compared to other technologies, FTTH greatly increases connection speeds available to computer users.
A FTTH masterplan for Thimphu Thromde is completed so far, with utility ducts and building cabling standards adopted by MoIT.
Furthermore, the agency is currently developing a nationwide urban center FTTH masterplan as well.
