Digitalization

Incorporating fibre optic cables to existing power distribution infrastructure.

- Tariq Al Banna

It is a set goal of the Government of Bangladesh to make the country digital by the year 2021. But even after setting the goal several years back, it is not clear to country’s people what it actually means being digitalized. Being digitalized doesn’t necessarily mean using internet only. It doesn’t mean a healthy number of Facebook users. It doesn’t mean sending e-mails from any place of the country.

First and foremost, it means digitalisation of services related to basic human needs including education, medicine and food. We must remember that being digitalised by 2021 means serving every household in the country with fibre optic cables by that time; including, needless to say, households in every village and upazila of the country.

For this, we have to bring the activities of every ministry, educational institute, hospital and other government and non-government organisations under a single umbrella of interrelated internet communication. The most important job is to create a countrywide infrastructure for the availability of internet bandwidth.

If we can successfully bring fibre optic cables to every door of the country, the gains will be numerous. Since long, the country’s Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Nationwide