Grameenphone has managed to repair a breakdown in its fibre optic cables and restore its mobile network after a two-hour nationwide outage.
The outage hit Dhaka, Chattogram, and many other parts of the country shortly after 11:30 am on Thursday, halting both the voice and internet service of Bangladesh’s largest mobile service provider.
The network was fixed around 2 pm, according to Khairul Bashar, Grameenphone’s head of communications, reports bdnews24.com.
Previously, Khairul had said: “We noticed some issues with the Grameenphone network around 11:45 am. Fibre optic cables were disconnected at three locations in Tangail and Sirajganj, which has led to the problem.”
Of the 180 million mobile SIM users in Bangladesh, about 79.3 million or 42 per cent are Grameenphone subscribers, according to data from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, or BTRC. Many of them were affected by the outage.
The BTRC had issued a notice instructing Grameenphone to take urgent action to restore its mobile network nationwide as soon as possible.
The regulator also sought proper explanations from the company about the network breakdown, describing the incident as a “national emergency”.