Bangladesh's first commercial satellite Bangabandhu-1 has reached its orbital position on Tuesday, thus making a big step towards full scale operation.
The satellite reached its allotted orbital slot of 119.1 E on Tuesday morning, Project Director of Bangabandhu Satellite Project Md. Mesbahuz- zaman told the FE.
"The ground stations at Gazipur and Betbunia are already receiving signal from the satellite", Mesbahuzzaman said, adding "Hopefully, we will go for the 'In Orbit Test' by tomorrow".
The development came 10 days after the geostationary satellite was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 12. As such, Bangladesh became the 57th country to own a commercial space satellite.
"It may take around 20 days to complete the IOT while it would take two to three months to go for commercial operation", Mesbahuzzaman said.
Experts have long observed that apart from enhancing the national prestige, having its own space satellite would economically benefit the country in multifarious ways.
For example, it has been pointed that Bangladesh is currently meeting its satellite connectivity demand through renting a bandwidth from foreign operators and the country has to pay 14 million US dollars a year for it.
However, once Bangabandhu-1 is fully operational, it will help the country save that amount as the satellite will reduce this dependency, officials said.
Apart from meeting domestic demand, the satellite will also be able to provide services for foreign TV channels and audiences and thereby earn foreign currencies.
Bangabandhu-1 satellite with a capacity of 1,600 megahertz has 40 transponders. The government is planning to dedicate half of the transponders for the local TV channels and remaining half will be deployed to serve the channels of other countries.
Earlier on 21 October 2015, The Cabinet Purchase Committee approved the project to buy the satellite system.
Later, BTRC signed a deal involving Tk 20.00 billion with Thales Alenia Space to construct the first-ever satellite project.
On September 9, 2016, an agreement of 157 million Euro (equivalent to Tk 14.00 billion) with Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) was signed for financing the project.
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