A disruption in the supply of the country's second submarine cable (SMW-5) has resulted in widespread interruptions in internet services across Bangladesh. The outage, attributed to a damaged submarine cable in Singapore, commenced early on Saturday.

Internet service providers have reported receiving complaints from customers regarding sluggish internet speeds, indicating the impact of the disruption on connectivity.

Mirza Kamal Ahmed, the managing director of Bangladesh Submarine Cables PLC (BSCPLC), the state-owned bandwidth provider, stated, "The SMW-5, which provided 1,600gb per second of bandwidth to the country, is currently entirely inactive. We are exploring alternatives using SMW-4, the first submarine cable, due to fiber cable issues in Singapore, affecting multiple countries, including Bangladesh." He further mentioned that it could take approximately 2 to 3 days to restore the connection.

Presently, the country's demand for bandwidth stands at around 5,000 units. While government agencies supply over 6,000 units of bandwidth through submarine cables, private companies fulfill the remaining demand using international terrestrial cables (ITCs).