Monowar Hossain, who told bdnews24.com on Friday morning that the repair work would commence at 2am on Aug 9, later in the day informed that due to some technical reasons, the work would now start at 2am on Aug 7.
As the lone submarine cable goes under repair, Bangladesh will face internet disruptions in the wee hours of Aug 7, according to the government official.
"Back-up arrangements have been made for the five-day repair work on the segment 1.01 of the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable," Monowar told bdnews24.com on Friday.
Initial one or two hours could see major disruptions, he said, and that being the reason, "we have chosen to start the work shortly after 2am when the traffic is comparatively low".
"Later (after the initial hours), there will be no problem," he said as the other segment – Italy's Palermo landing station – would be uninterrupted and arrangements have been made to connect with India's Bharti Airtel-maintained i2i cable, which directly connects Chennai with Singapore.
"We have requested the Submarine Cable Consortium to start the repair work after 2am Bangladesh time and they have agreed," Monowar said.
The Submarine Cable Consortium informed Bangladesh a month ago that one repeater needs to be replaced on the segment 1.01 of SEA-ME-WE-4 cable.
In digital communication systems, a repeater is a device that receives a digital signal on an electromagnetic or optical transmission medium and regenerates the signal along the next leg of the medium.
The segment stretches from Singapore to India's Mumbai via Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India's Chennai and Sri Lanka.
The repair work will be done on the portion of the cable that stretches between the landing stations of Singapore and Malaysia.
"It (the repair work) was initially scheduled to start on Aug 6. But we had to reschedule upon Malaysia's request," the BSCCL top official said.
"There is no chance of being disconnected with the whole world," he chose to clarify to allay the 'unfounded fear' among internet users.
Monowar explained, "The limited disruption would be from the East-bound traffic (Southeast Asia), not with the rest of the world.
"We (BSCCL) have arranged through state-owned Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd (BTCL) to connect with India's Bharti Airtel-maintained i2i cable, which directly connects Chennai with Singapore.
"This i2i cable will act as the alternative route to connect with East-bound traffic during the repair work."
He added that arrangements have been also made with the Palermo landing station to manage extra bandwidth for internet traffic.
Telecom experts have long been suggesting multiple cables for uninterrupted connectivity, and taking the demand into consideration, the government did float tender on March 31 this year for acquiring new submarine cable from private sector.
"But the process got stalled," a senior official of the BTCL said declining to specify the reason.
Asked, the BSCCL managing director also declined to make any comment on the issue.
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