IT Enabled Services

This is perhaps the newest segment in the ICT sector of our country. Medical transcription, GIS services, data warehousing and mining are still very new to our economy. Although there are firms who have entered this arena they are still very much in the infancy stage. Interestingly enough all the ingredients required to operate in this industry are already present in the country. It is up to association like BCS to increase this awareness among potential investors as well as existing ICT houses of the considerably potentiality in the ICT enabled sector. Furthermore our country owing to the convenient time difference with US enjoys a convenient time gap, which can be exploited if marketed properly.


Networking___________________________________________

Under this category lies all networking related service providers as in Satellite communication providers, ISPs, WAN and LAN providers etc. Bangladesh got a taste of online Internet only recently (1996). However from that time on and also due to some pragmatic Government Decisions the number of internet users has increase substantially over the years. At its present rate it is expected that by the end of this year about a half a million of people will have access to Internet.

Currently Bangladesh primary gateway to the Internet is still through a VSAT. While VSAT installation and regulations were quite exorbitant recently in an effort to increase the growth, VSAT regulation have been considerably minimized. This positive step has triggered an increase in not only the number of ISPs but also WAN and satellite communication service providers. In addition the Government has taken up plans to get the country connected via the submarine cable as soon as possible. With the expected connection to this cable coming into place next year, one can only imagine the growth that will be witnessed in the ISP sectors of our country.

An offshoot under this sector would be the dotcom industry. With the correction of the dotcom value in the NASDAQ exchange, the growth of this industry never really took off. Furthermore current regulations are not conducive for such growth. E-commerce, which is playing a significant role in the global economy, has no role to play in our primarily owing to Government regulations. However recent developments have suggested that Government will revise the laws to promote cyber use. It is expected that with the enactment of these laws the number of Dotcoms would increase considerably. Also e-commerce a new facet, at least for our country’s perspective would be introduced and thereby injecting more dynamism into the economy