Telecom operators stalled internet connections for over an hour before the SSC test on information and communication technology started on Sunday.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission took the step to prevent question leaks in the board exams, a BTRC official said.
The Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams started on February 1. The three-hour exams start at 10am.
The government has been unsuccessful so far in stopping question leaks. Question leaks during the PSC (Primary School Certificate) and JSC (Junior School Certificate) exams last year received media attention several times.
The trend continues with SSC examinees receiving the questions on the social media, especially Facebook Messenger, ahead of the exams.
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said he would urge regulators to block Facebook for a certain period after reports of question leaks surfaced over the past few days.
An official of a telecom company said BTRC had issued a letter calling on them to snap the connections at 9am but it was 9:30am when they were finally able to oblige due to technical glitches.
Mobile data traffic dropped across the country for an hour, Suman Ahmed Sabir, chief strategy officer of international internet gateway Fibre@Home, said.
However, the services of internet service providers (ISPs) remained unharmed, said MA Hakim, president of Internet Service Providers Association Bangladesh, reports bdnews24.
“The internet service providers received no such order from the BTRC.”
Bangladesh has more than 40 million internet subscribers, according to BTRC’s latest report. Around 70 million of them use mobile internet.
Bangladesh suspended internet connections throughout the country for one and a half hours on November 18, 2015 in an attempt to disable communications among militants following a series of terror attacks and murders.
