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Source:  The Financial Express

By:  Engr. Nurul Basher
Ex-Director (Microwave) BT&T

The government has been taking hard actions against some telecom operators who are purportedly using their internet facilitates for making international telephone calls. The operators are being fined millions of takas, their most valuable equipments are being confiscated and some are being banned from continuing such operations.

As a former Bangladesh Telegraph & Telephone Board (BT&T) official, I still do not understand as to why VOIP should be declared illegal in the first place. To put it simply, I understand VOIP is transmitting speech signal through the internet bandwidth. The operator is paying his rent for the internet band width. Also he is paying for the telephone line rent and call charges. Capability to transmit voice over internet band width is made possible through the advancement of signal processing technology. Why should someone be punished for using higher technology?

I recall when in the early 1980′s fax machine was introduced, BT&T used to charge an additional amount of Tk 10,000/- per fax machine. By then I left BT & T and used to have heated argument with my friends in the BT & T top management about the matter. They introduced this charging system only because they found an extra income source without contributing anything.

Today, VOIP is declared illegal as BT & T is being unable to provide cheap service which the IP service providers are contributing. If BT & T is loosing revenue because of VOIP use by the internet operators, then it is BT&T’s fault. It is like punishing a motor bike rider by a bullock cart driver as the latter cannot catch up with the former. It is single stupidity and wrongdoing by someone who is short of in knowledge. I like to ask the authorities concerned to come clean and prove that VOIP is illegal because it is harmful to the people in the way toxic drug import is illegal because it harmful to national health. Following a bad law, even if it is a law, is harmful to the nation in the long run.

I call for a national debate and let the authorities concerned defend themselves to prove what they are doing by declaring VOIP “illegal” is right.

As soon as any audio album is released in Bangladesh – it is available for download in many Bangladeshi audio/video download sites. Drama and movies are also available for download in these sites within a very short time. This is causing a real time irreversible damage to the Bangladeshi Audio/Video industry. BTRC, understanding the fact, has taken an initiative to shutdown/block numbers of websites to protect the industry. I know this will annoy us a bit as we download our favourite music, drama or movies from these sites for free. But I personally believe that this will help our audio/video industry to flourish more – related people will be benefitted and will be encouraged more to create better things in future. Many of the audio/video production companies have complained to BTRC (from Confidential Sources) and have reported against numbers of websites that are allowing to download those companies’ materials illegally without their consent.

I am not sure how far BTRC can move, but publishers of these websites will definitely look for alternatives. May be some new beneficial groups will emerge in different forms.

I recently encountered a problem with a Joomla website which had VirtuMart in it. I moved the whole joomla site from a demo server to an active server with the actual domain pointing to it. Everything worked fine as I did the required changes in the configuration.php of the joomla folder. But the VirtueMart component was still pointing to the old demo server path. I then googles a bit and found a very good solution. I changed the config file of the virtuemart component located at:

/administrator/components/com_virtuemart/virtuemart.cfg.php

The following two paths need to be changed with the new path:

1. define( ‘URL’, ‘http://demoserverURL/joomlafolder/’ );
2. define( ‘SECUREURL’, ‘http://demoserverURL/joomlafolder/‘ );

Instead of the “demoserverLink/joomlafolder” use your actual joomla folder link.

You might face a new problem while doing this. If you are using ftp to download the file “virtuemart.cfg.php” and re-upload it with the changed path, you may get an “Permission Denied” error. There is a good solution for this too. Install a joomla component named “Extplorer” or “JoomlaXplorer“. This component is a joomla admin panel component that gives you the power to upload/delete/edit files in the joomla site. After installing any one of these two components just browse through the file and edit the above mentioned two lines of the “virtuemart.cfg.php” file.

I could get rid of the problem this way, I hope the solution will be useful for anyone facing the same problem.

Atlast the WiMAX service is on AIR for the consumers of Bangladesh ( specifically for the people in Gulshan, Dhaka ). It has been more than a year several companies got WiMAX operator license in Bangladesh. People of Bangladesh has been biting nails and waiting for a superspeed connectivity. Well they have it now. But is it like what people expected? Augere Wireless Broadband started providing their service with the name: QUBEE. I have gone through their website and I was seriously disappointed with the packages that were there in their website.

People were expecting for a super fast connectivity with no restriction of internet usage.

Source: QUBEE Website

Do you really think these two packages can penetrate the ISP market in Bangladesh (or perhaps in Dhaka)? Are we not familiar with similar services already? Citycell launched Mobile highspeed Internet service months ago. Let’s look at their package:

Source: Citycell Website

Are the Qubee packages any special different from the Citycell’s offer? If mobility is the key issue I will say Citycell will be a better choice here due to their wide coverage area.  Otherwise there are many ISPs providing bandwidth to home/corporate users which are much cheap compared to Qubee.

Now let’s do some math. 1 mbps = 1/8 mBps. That is, in 1 minute you’ll be able to download 60/8 = 7.5 Mega Bytes. In 1 hour : 450 Mega Bytes. In this rate Qubee’s offered 9 GB will take 20 Hours to be consumed. If you download 10 DivX Movies (around 700 MB each) you’ll be able to consume the whole data Volume.  6200 taka data plan consumed in 10 Movie Downloads!! 620 taka per movie!! Really damn smart packages. I know people will say these are corporate bandwidth and are not supposed to be used for movie downloading. Well, what is the basic difference then?

Let’s consider my home Internet connection in home user’s category. I pay 1650 taka to Xnet for a 288 kbps connection. I get 30 KB (yes you are right, it’s Kilo Byte). At this rate I can download 2.6 GB per day and believe me my ISP doesn’t apply any cap on usage. Literally I can download 78 GB in exchange for 1650 taka only. Compare it with what Qubee is offering.

Now let’s consider the corporate needs. Corporate offices need seemless minimum guaranteed bandwidth for their operations. Now a days renowned ISPs charge around 14 thousand taka for 512 kbps and around 20 thousand taka for 1 mbps connection. That sounds too much compared to Qubee – isn’t it? Noooo… With the 512kbps/1mbps connections from the ISPs you can download in continuous 512kbps/1mbps for the whole month and the ISP is bound to ensure that. Now you can download for 720 hours with these ISPs at 512kbps/1mbps – compared to Qubee’s 20 Hours.

Why is Qubee charging so much!!! is this because of the WiMAX technology?? If that’s the benefit we were talking about WiMAX then I really doubt if it will be accepted by our Internet users or not. If Internet mobility is the issue, then I can say these types of mobile Highspeed internet was already there for quite a long time (ie, Accesstel’s NLOS technology, Grameen Phone’s 236 kbps Internet and Citycell’s 512 kbps Internet). If a new company launches its services with a new technology – A Buzz is required to penetrate the existing market. People will not accept this rubbish offer just to enjoy a new technology. Because when we buy or pay for anything we actually buy the services of what we are buying. Service is the important issue here. If the new technology doesn’t provide any better service, then either the company hasn’t utilized the technology perfectly or the technology itself is not efficient. But since WiMAX is running in other countries successfully we can say that Qubee’s business plan with WiMAX service is not perfect.

GoodLuck Qubee…

Hasibul Islam

23/10/09

http://hasibul.info/blog

There is no doubt that- our nation is progressing. Our GDP is going up, our Average income is going up, our economy is growing and our live style is improving. Our improved lifestyle is creating even more demand on our resources. We are using them more rapidly then ever before. As a result we are running out of these resources even more rapidly. Are we aware of this?

I remember, there was no scarcity of water in our area even 3/4 years back. Now, I am getting used to No-Water condition as literally the water supply has gone dramatically down. There are two main reasons for this. Number 1 is the Water Layer – which has gone so down that the water pumps can hardly pull out water from the deep. The second reason is the Electricity problem – which it self is a problem and will be discussed in the later part of this article. Again we are responsible for both the reasons. Our ever growing demand is forcing the water authority to pump even more water, on the other hand we are reducing the natural water basin which lets the water from the surface to go down to fill up the water that we are consuming by pumping up. The city is getting covered by the bitumen surfaces and concrete layers.

Discussing the 2nd reason of water crisis will bring up even another more important problem that are facing – yes I meant “Electricity Problem”. In last few years a big number of new electricity users were introduced whereas the total production of electricity has gone down. I think there are two major reasons for Electricity problem. The first one was the lack of future vision and no-maintenance, because of which no new electricity generation was added, moreover it has gone down due to power stations going down due to lack of overhauling services. The second reason is that the resources upon which Electricity production depends, are in scarce situation itself. Examples are – Water level drop in Kaptai lake which is the largest hydroelectric power plant in Bangladesh, the supply shortages of Natural gas – using which many of the power station run. The water level drop can be identified as natural disaster, but the gas problem is again ignited by the misuse of it by us. We burn more than 10 cubic meter gas for our car at a cost of only 160-170 taka every day- which is enough for cooking burner to run for more than a month. Just imagine how quickly we are burning our resources. The rate at which we are burning our natural gas will cause running out of it within less than a decade. What are we going to do then? No Gas means, no fertilizer – no Electricity. We can understand what no fertilizer means, but what about no electricity? No electricity means, no irrigation- no water – no industrialization – no development. Are we really aware of the future we are heading?
We can’t change our fate overnight but we can try atleast. We have to be very careful about using our resources and should try all possible ways to save as much as we can. If we are not awakened soon, this dreadful situation will welcome the ultimate nightmare for us.

BaKeDCaKeD
1 am, 26th April 2009.

also available at: NSUers.com

In many movies or TV shows I saw many a writers (famous) trying to write something but wasting their papers with garbage writings and dumping those. Finally they write something wonderful. Well, that’s why they are good writers. That’s when I started to give a go. Who knows, dumping papers in the trash can in numbers may help me write something kewl (!).

Sky is the limit …

We often use the words “sky is the limit” or “sky high”. Can anyone say- what possibly is the height of the sky? Could anyone found the boundary where the sky ends? May be someone knows the answers of these question, but I don’t know honestly. May be human ambition is also something like that. We can’t really put a boundary for it. We live between the reality and ambition like the way we do live between the earth and the Sky. Here the earth is the reality and Sky is the ambition. Whatever our ambition might be we are always closer to the reality exactly the way we are always closer to the earth rather than flying towards the sky. But we always try to jump off the earth and grab the stars, reality pulls us to the earth. Not everyone cherish to grab the star, not everyone who desire to reach the stars reaches it. We can never stop our mind to limit our ambition.

Who Am I?

Sometimes I go through some strange feelings. I look at my hands, I see it can move. But how am I moving it? I look myself in the mirror and try to figure out who the person in the mirror is. Imagine if there were no mirrors, no photography, no sketch in the world, not even anything glacy which will reflect our face infront of our eyes. You would never know how you look. And then all of a sudden one day you could see yourself in a mirror – How will you feel when you see your face for the first time? Will it be anything different than a stranger you see for the first time on the road? Some boring and weird questions right? Sorry…

What’s the Fastest?

I never met Albert Einstein and didn’t hear anything myself, but people say that this man said -” Imagination is more important than knowledge “. Whatever famous people say become famous quote (!!) – that’s what I also thought. When I was a child someone asked me a question -”What is the fastest thing you can ever imagine?”. I answered – “Rocket”, as at that time I didn’t have any idea of the speed of the light. The person who asked me the question replied that I was wrong. “Speed of light” also wasn’t the right answer. He/she replied that it is the Human Mind which is the fastest of all. It takes the sunlight 8 minutes to reach the earth. But our mind can go to the sun not even consuming a split of a second, which 1 is faster?

Everybody is wishing for and welcoming 2009 but no one seems to miss year 2008. How fast time runs out!!! I really had to force my mind to believe that year 2008 is no more with us …

I don’t know why I feel 2008 flew off so quickly, may be the year was a good one. But the truth is that, 2008 was a very eventful year and it didn’t end as I expected to – considering the political change that Bangladeshi people had to face at the very end of the year.

Let’s just pray that the year 2009 will be more peaceful a year to us and to the mankind.

If, what I’ve seen in the TV news is true then, Bangladeshi people will enjoy WiMAX within 3 months. Mr. M. A Mannan of Bangla Lion communications in an interview after the license handover ceremony, said that they will be able to establish WiMAX network across Bangladesh within 3 months. He also added that people of Bangladesh may enjoy high speed internet along with mobile communication spending as low as 300 taka. He also added that, the allocated 35 MHz frequency will allow them to provide huge bandwidth to a greater number of people ensuring Quality Of Service. The more the people use it the cheaper it will be for them.

WiMAX in Bangladesh will allow people to enjoy 65 different types of facilities through it, including high speed internet, mobile communication, video surveillance, video conferencing, distant learning etc. Even remotest part of Bangladesh will be under high speed internet through WiMAX.

Augere Wireless Broadband Limited Bangladesh was the first company get the license and is also working on establishing WiMAX network across Bangladesh. Brac BDMail is the other company that has won the license, but yet to get the license due to their failure to pay the license fee.

I have some diagrams and pictures that I’d like to share with you, which might help you understand the basic functions of WiMAX and how those works.

Bangla Lion Communications, Brac BDmail Network Ltd and Augere Wireless Broadband Limited Bangladesh - won Licenses to operate as WiMAX operators in Bangladesh. These 3 companies won in the auction for a record breaking 31 million dollar or 215 crore taka. The previous record for WiMAX license fee was in Singapore (18 million Dollar).

Nine companies took part in the auction that held in the Radisson Hotel yesterday (24th September, 2008). Other six companies were – Bangladesh Internet Exchange Limited, Clearstream Rank (BD) Ltd, Mango Teleservices Ltd, P-1 Consortium, Telestart Communications Ltd and Vtel Bangla.

Each of the companies have been alloted a chunk of 35 MHz frequency to operate. Mobile phone companies and relevant companies were barred to participate in this process.

According to the conditions in the license, the three companies will have to setup atleast 90 base stations within the first year and should start providing services by September 2009. Moreover, the whole country should be under coverage within three yeas. The service will consists of wireless data over a long distance, point to point and even cellular mobile data access.

Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commision estimates that the number of internet users will exceed 1 crore once WiMAX becomes fully functional.

This indeed is a great news for all tech savvy people in Bangladesh, but some of the facts also suggests that WiMAX will not be any cheaper mean. Companies spending such a huge money will definitely try to get their money back. In a TV interview Mr. Mannan of Bangla Lion Communication said that they achieved the license spending a huge money which they want to cut loose by getting a foreign company who will co-invest with them. Besides, the equipments will still be very expensive for the end users. It will simply be a replacement of the current radio link point to point technology. Mobile data access has already been in Bangladesh for quite a long time. Introduction of 3G will also boost the existing mobile data services. Mobile phone companies will try to adopt 3G (Which is also almost as fast service as WiMAX) to compete with WiMAX. Since mobile phone companies already have a huge subscribers base and the 3G equipments (Mobile phones) are well within the reach of end users, 3G is in a better position to get attention by the Bangladeshis while the reach of WiMAX will boost the corporate sector for their ever growing demand of faster and wider data transfers.

WiMAX or 3G, whatever it is, Bangladesh is adopting newer technologies quicker than many other countries – and these facts are enough to make us optimistic. Since ours is a small country with a huge population and limited resources, technologically sound population will be able to produce more using brain power and technology instead of industrialization- which we can’t afford in reality.

Hasibul Islam

hasibul.info

Most of the Bangladeshi website are hosted either at USA or at UK servers. There are many reasons for that. Those web servers are secured, fast, reliable and can handle much traffic and process load. Besides, those are powered by high speed internet connection yet at lower price than anywhere else. Those hosting service providers are experienced and technologically far ahead. Probably this is the reason why everybody prefers USA or UK servers.

Since the demand for web services are growing day by day, it is becoming an important issue to ensure data security and privacy. Think of a government site where it will consists of data which is confidential. Hosting such sites in other country’s web servers will definitely be a catastrophic decision. Fortunately in Bangladesh, the government sites are hosted locally (at BTCL web servers).

Now that web services and E-commerce sites are becoming popular the importance of where these are hosted – becoming an important thing to consider. In many cases the target user group of these sites are solely Bangladeshi users residing in Bangladesh (e.g. bdjobs.com). Hosting these types of websites locally will not only ensure confidentiality and security but also maximum up time for the local users. How? We have seen our national pride the submarine cable snatched a lot of time. We are disconnected from the sites that are hosted at USA or UK servers. Instead, if the sites are hosted locally these will still be available for the Bangladeshi residence although the submarine cable is down. That’s because locally hosted servers will still be available and the DNS servers will still be able to point us to the locally hosted sites. It will actually act like an intranet service inside the whole country. Besides these, if the sites which provide download services like mp3 download, Drama download etc, are hosted locally, a huge amount of bandwidth pressure on the submarine cable will decrease resulting more bandwidth available for other usage.

I remember when I used Sirius Broadband they used to provide users an intranet site/server from where the users were able to download movies, mp3s, natoks, softwares, videos etc. Normally if that service wasn’t there the users would download those from other sources using internet. But the above intranet server could save Sirius Broadband precious bandwidth by restricting users by diverting them to intranet server.

Now If we consider the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited to be the national ISP, they will be able to save bandwidth if the sites are hosted locally since the traffic requests and sources are both running locally. It will somewhat act as what Sirius Broadband did.

Now let’s focus on what are the hurdles. The bandwidth cost in Bangladesh is too high to run an web server smoothly. Although the above procedure will hardly use the submarine cable bandwidth the ISPs have to pay to BSCCL (Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited) since BSCCL acts as an Internet Exchange (HUB). I am not sure about whether govt has given the charge to any other company to maintain the Internet exchange through which all the ISPs and other companies willing to have local web servers will be interconnected among themselves in the same way the telecom companies are connected. Rather than buying only Submarine cable bandwidth they will be buying local bandwidth through which one ISPs will be able to transfer information with websites hosted at other ISPs end. Submarine cable connectivity will still be required since website browsing request can still be generated from outside the country. For example, the trace route from http://visualroute.visualware.com in the following image.

It is like the telecom industry. All the local and NWD calls are generated and terminated at the telecom operators end except for ISD calls. Only ISD calls require outbound bandwidth to connect with telephones in other countries. All the local and NWD calls are routed through multiexchange servers through which all the telecom operators are interconnected among themselves. Only for ISD outgoing/incoming calls these operators depends upon BTTB which has the only connectivity with international exchanges.

There fore local bandwidth is to feed requests from Bangladesh and submarine cable bandwidth to feed requests from outside the country. The local bandwidth should be in negligible cost. Thus people will be encouraged to host websites in local servers. Moreover this will ensure maximum uptime causing maximum exposure for e-commerce sites. This is the way how the e-commerce culture in Bangladesh can really emerge.

I am not sure whether this methodology has already been established or not, but this really can be a boom. Many companies will come forward with an intension to have a website or web based online operation system. This will not only automate and increase the total output but also will create opportunity for web developers and software firms.

Disclaimer: The above statements are sort of top view of a system and I really can’t dig any deep because of my knowledge limitation. It is possible that the system has already been deployed and I am unaware of it. Constructive replies will be encouraged pointing out whether I was wrong in any point or if the recommended system is not deployable at all.