INTERNET users still complain of poor speed and disruption a day after the authorities at night on July 24 restored broadband internet services which were taken off at night on July 18 when the student protests for reforms in civil service job reservations turned violent. Mobile internet services, which faced a decline in speed on July 16 and were stopped on July 17, are yet to be restored. While access to some social media platforms remains blocked, messaging applications such as WhatsApp that are often used for urgent communications are also reported not to be working. The broadband internet speed has been so slow that people often face trouble in accessing the most popular Gmail for e-mail communications. The broadband internet services that is carried to offices and houses over cable and are then carried to devices with the help of broadband routers account for a bandwidth of about 3,500 Gbps in all. Mobile internet services that are delivered through mobile devices with subscriber鈥檚 identity module cards account for a bandwidth of about 3,000 Gbps. As the mobile internet services are yet to be restored, the broadband services, as inadequate as they now are, are faced with an additional load of mobile internet services users, making it further slow.
When the broadband internet was put back to service, the authorities said that they were so doing on a priority basis in selected areas. The authorities the next day said that the services would be fully restored. But problems kept happening in many areas. And, the constraints that users keep facing in internet services have created problems in areas of communication, banking, education, financial transaction, electronic commerce and almost everything that requires internet connectivity between two or more electronic devices. With access to social media platforms such as Facebook having still been blocked, entrepreneurs who run small and medium business on Facebook pages, also known as F-commerce which in Bangladesh hosts more than a third of a million small and medium enterprises a half of which are run by women, are also faced with trouble. A shutdown of their trade even for a week means a huge amount of money incurred daily in losses. And, a large number of people engaged in product delivery are also in distress. Internet service providers say that when the services were taken off, cache servers, which serve certain content from within the own network somewhat easing congestion, were automatically disconnected. Making the cache servers online would ease the speed problem a bit more and the providers hope that this could happen soon. A delayed or poor access to information carried over the internet is also the denial of people鈥檚 right to information as much as no access to information.
The government must, therefore, restore internet services of all types without delay and a full force.