October 2003 updates

Bangladeshi e-entrepreneurs moving into Santa Clara
By Samudra E. Haque in Dhaka, Bangladesh. October 2003

The business promotion and support activities of the Bangladesh ICT Business Centre have been launched. Over 25 Bangladesh ICT companies are reported to have signed agreements for shared office space in Santa Clara, USA. Information about the organisation can be found at its website http://www.bibc.biz. The centre is a partnership of non-resident Bangladeshi, Government of Bangladesh, and industry associations of Bangladesh.

The ICT Incubator facility is also seeing a quick pickup of office space at its 18 storey building in the Kawran Bazar Commercial Area in Dhaka. Among the many ICT products being developed by programmer groups is an innovative e-commerce research and reporting service which has won many customers by providing timely commerce intelligence reports on tender, purchase and bid information in the marketplace. Its website is http://www.bdtender.info. A free, live, limited demo is available at the website.

More information about these initiatives can be obtained from the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services website http://www.basisbd.org. Some of its members, such as http://www.technohaven.com, will be attending COMDEX 2003 in Las Vegas.

VOIP now legal in Bangladesh
By Chin Saik Yoon in Penang, Malaysia. October 2003

The Bangladesh Cabinet approved voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) or Internet telephony at its meeting on 10 November 2003. This was reported by The Daily Star on 11 November http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/11/11/d3111101011.htm.

The Cabinet also decided that service providers applying to provide VOIP must pay licence fees and a significant security deposit aimed at discouraging "shady firms". The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) will be issuing the licences and supervising the operation of Internet telephony.

This move by the Cabinet will see the cost of international call charges drop significantly.