A rise in the speed of Internet and the number of Internet users reflects the growing interest of the people in information communication technology. The increase in the Internet speed in Bangladesh from 2mbps to 2.7mbps is encouraging, but more efforts are needed to make it faster given the fact that global average Internet speed is 6.3mbps.
It allows people a very quick and cheap way of communicating with the rest of the world. It is also empowering for users because it is literally an infinite source of information and knowledge. This particular benefit is immensely important because wider access to education, information and knowledge is vital for our progress as a people and as a country.
Internet has become so influential in day to day activities that these days high-speed Internet is considered as a basic service for ensuring quality of life.
No doubt, the rapid growth in terms of Internet speed and accessibility would not have been possible without the government’s determined effort to carry forward the digitisation process of the country. The government’s policy of making Internet bandwidth cheaper and net speed faster is commendable. However, the users could hardly draw any benefit from this government policy as Internet service providers (ISPs) neither lowered the prices of Internet packages nor are they providing adequate bandwidth to shared connections. If ISPs provide Internet connections to a large number of customers by using minimum bandwidth, the Internet speed will remain slow. Mobile phone users too are getting poor speed of data for the same reason.
So, it is clear that Internet providing companies are not passing on the benefits of this crucial government policy to the end users; they are only using it to widen their profit margin. Therefore, we urge the policymakers to take necessary steps to increase the quality of service provided by the Internet companies; otherwise, the beneficiaries will continue to be deprived.