High-speed mobile internet has been restored across the country after a gap of almost 37 hours.
The restoration means the end of the latest bout of half-week internet disruption that affected 86 million subscribers.
The telecoms regulator instructed mobile operators to restore 3G and 4G services around 10:00 am on Tuesday.
Soon after receiving an instruction from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), operators restored regular mobile internet services.
The move came almost two days after the 11th general election held on Sunday last.
The commission has actually been in a seesaw mood with regard to mobile internet since Friday.
Consequently, there have been a total of three rounds of various degrees of internet shutdown or slowdown over the past five days.
In total, the country has witnessed 74 hours of internet slowdown or shutdown over a span of 108 hours.
It started when mobile internet was suddenly slowed down for 10 hours from 10:00 pm on Thursday to 8:00 am on Friday.
Later on Sunday afternoon, the BTRC again asked the operators to shut down 3G and 4G services. However, 2G service was outside the purview of this restriction.
Even, just seven hours later, the regulator asked the operators to shut down the 2G service as well.
Consequently, mobile internet became completely unavailable from Sunday midnight.
Although all sorts of mobile internet, including 3G and 4G, were restored on Sunday evening, the services were again slowed down to 2G just after three hours.
Insiders observed that such frequent mobile internet shutdowns caused manifold inconveniences to the public, given their growing reliance on internet.
At present, there are 91.8 million internet subscribers in the country. Of them, around 86 millions are mobile internet users.
"Almost 25 per cent of our revenue comes from data services. Mobile internet shutdown means we lose at least 25 per cent of daily revenue," said a high official of a mobile operator.
In the absence of 3G and 4G services, mobile internet users are usually not able to carry out any activities that may require heavy data flow.
At the same time, activities like uploading photos or streaming online videos will not be possible. Users may also struggle to run useful apps which require huge data.
Users also point out that essential business activities like e-commerce, online transaction, money transfer, card-based transactions and ride-sharing services get hampered.
BTRC officials, however, said the move to slow down mobile internet was aimed at preventing the spread of rumours during the election.
"The decision to restrict mobile internet was earlier made during a meeting between the Election Commission and the BTRC," said BTRC senior assistant director Md Zakir Hossain.
"The aim was to prevent the spread of rumours and ensure security of the people," he added.
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