Internet and bandwidth consumption in Bangladesh have been maintaining an upward growth in recent years. It proves that the rate of internet penetration is on the rise here although productive users and heavy contents are few and far between. Experts think that we now need to develop more and more local contents in native language Bangla, among other things, to make internet penetration effective and its use meaningful, appealing and attractive.
Internet specialist Sumon Ahmed Sabir, who is now Chief Strategy Officer of Fiber@home Limited, which is the largest NSP (network services protocol) and one of the largest IP transit providers in Bangladesh, thinks that internet penetration is basically about the real-life users of internet compared to the total size of population. He, however, said the rate of penetration varies depending on choice of variables used to measure total number of internet users.
There remains a concern over the productive use of internet. In most of the cases, we don't see people gaining knowledge and getting involved with money-making or business-like activities with access to internet. Rather, we find that most of the users remain busy indulging in entertainment - by using platforms like facebook, youtube etc.
Some debate over the paradoxical figure of internet penetration notwithstanding, the overall number of internet users in this country has marked a significant rise over the years. In 2000, Bangladesh had only 100,000 internet users. By December 2017, the figure reached 80,483,000 compared to the country's total population of 166,368,149. Thus, internet penetration rate in the country, as per internetworldstats.com data, now stands at 48.4 per cent.
While there is no doubting the growth perception, there remains perennial controversy over the growth figure. Technology giant Google recently said the number of active internet users in Bangladesh is 40 million, which is almost half the government count. The government data, provided by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), showed the country's internet connections at 80,829,000 at the end of January 2018.
According to the telecom regulator, the country's four mobile operators now have 147 million customers while the number of mobile internet users is 75,396,000. A recent BTRC report published on its website also revealed that a total of 5,345,000 internet users were connected to the internet service providers (ISPs) or public switch telephone networks (PSTN), while 88,000 users were hooked to WiMAX.
BTRC said the total number of internet subscribers of the country totalled 66.779 million at the end of January 2017 while it stood at 56.167 million at the end of January 2016 when the number of mobile internet users continued to top the subscriber chart, followed by the ISPs, PSTNs and WiMAX users. Data revealed by BTRC and internetworldstats.com show that the growing number of users of Facebook, as the predominant social media platform, reached 28,000,000 as of December last with the penetration rate hovering over 16 per cent. Only six months back, there were 21,000,000 Facebook users till June last year with the penetration rate at 12.7 per cent.
However, search engine major Google, United Nations' specialised agency for ICTs - International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Bank (WB) data do not match with that of the BTRC. As per Google count, 35 per cent of the 40 million internet-connected people use internet everyday - meaning that 14 million people or 8.75 per cent of the country's total population use internet daily. Officials of the technology giant revealed the data while speaking at a November 30 event in Dhaka.
Although the technology giant put the number of active net users at a significantly lower figure compared to the one divulged by the BTRC, sources in Google said it was their internal data and that they had counted the number of monthly or daily active internet users. A Google (Asia-Pacific) official said the internet user number here will grow to 90 million within the year 2020. When asked about Google and BTRC having different figures, another official noted, "The Google figure was based on the use of Youtube, PlayStore and Gmail and other social media used by the people here." He, however, refused to comment on the BTRC counting.
An official of the country's telecom regulator said their figure, as provided by the mobile network operators (MNOs), represents active mobile phone numbers using the internet. BTRC thinks anyone using the internet just once in 90 days can be counted as an internet user.
Months back, ITU's ICT Development Index-2017 showed that Bangladesh has the lowest internet penetration in South Asia, with just 14.50 per cent of households having internet access. The country stands at a lowly 147th position in the ITU index, up from its 148th spot back in 2010. Even Myanmar that introduced mobile phone services only a few years ago came ahead of Bangladesh in the rankings, at 135. Its internet penetration stands at 24.38 per cent in terms of households having internet access.
Earlier, the World Bank in its 'World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends' said that internet remains unavailable, inaccessible, and unaffordable to a majority of the world's population, of which Bangladesh has a large share. The South Asian country has the fifth largest offline population in the world, with about 148 million reported to be not connected to internet. Even internetlivestats.com also shows that Bangladesh had 21,439,070 internet users as of 2016. With the total size of population said to be 162,910,864, the rate of internet penetration was recorded at 13.2 per cent. The government, however, disagrees with the above statistics. State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak said the government is satisfied with the BTRC's published numbers, which show the country's internet penetration is close to 50 per cent.
While using internet, people go for a diverse array of uses - from reading email to posting an update on social media, checking into a work meeting, navigating to a destination and even enjoying a favourite song or album depending on one's choice. Hence, a robust and meaningful growth in internet penetration, backed by productive users, can drive us forward to be in the big bracket of leading countries with higher rate of literacy, income, expenditure etc.
Statistics show that 51 per cent of the world's population had internet access as of June 2017. A pioneering figure of Bangladesh's internet industry, former MD of one of the country's leading internet service provider BDCOM Online Limited and currently the Policy Co-Chair of Australia-based APNIC (the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre), Mr Sumon, however, suggested that the government, in a bid to make internet penetration and its use effective, should emphasise more on offering people meaningful content and developing the country's internet infrastructure that essentially covers improving the bandwidth service.
Bangladesh needs to focus more on meaningful internet use to reap optimum benefits from the growing number of people's access to internet and technology. The rate of internet penetration, no doubt, reflects our march forward in terms of people's empowerment, access to technology and preparedness to thrive further. Netizens these days are focusing further on harnessing newer possibilities using the wide-open and vast array of internet resources. Indeed, the growing number of internet connections can give our economy the much-needed boost by adding more to the gross domestic product (GDP). The right thing for us now is to put together all relevant initiatives to make productive use of the world wide web and generate a sizeable result exploring endless possibilities out of the growing rate of internet literacy and penetration.
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