Port city goes net crazy

Science and ICT Minister, Moyeen Khan launching CCOAB's website while inaugurating the fair

The fair, being the first of its kind in Chittagong, earned great attention of the visitors providing special discounts on internet connections, high speed solutions for corporate clients, web services, and a jam-packed free internet browsing space backed by 15 cyber cafes. The port city being a newer consumer segment in the country for internet business has proved to have a good demand.

In an exclusive interview, Ashfaquddin Mamun, general secretary, CCOAB, told StarTech that unity between the cyber café owners in order to eradicate the misuse of cyber cafes is one of their main objectives alongside creating the awareness for internet among users in the remotest part of the country. "We want to provide training sessions in schools and colleges through our member cyber cafes in different parts of the nation so that no one from our future generation gets deprived from the benefits of internet", stressed Mamun.

The fair being inaugurated by Science and ICT Minister Moyeen Khan, also held a seminar that was accompanied by Akhteruzzaman Manju, president, Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB), SM Iqbal, president, Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS), Johirul Islam, president, CCOAB, Abdullah H. Kafi, former president, BCS and Hasanur Rahman, deputy secretary, ministry of science and ICT.

"I appreciate the initiative of CCOAB for creating such an opportunity for the youths of this country to get familiar to the internet. Private sector organisations lead the role in developing the nation in to an ICT based society that is clearly visible as their contribution for the purpose of ICT Incubator in Dhaka was ten times higher than that of the government investment", said Khan.

"We have also authorised the first ever cyber law in the country and set them in practice since the last two weeks. Using the internet service can facilitate you with updated news every hour instead of waiting for news on television channels", added Khan.

Sponsored by Banglalink, the fair included a number of regional ISPs, web firms, technical institutions and product distributors like, Computer Home, NIIT, Soft Solution, Chronicle Computer Ltd., Chittagong Online Ltd., Spider.net, ClickOnline, Rapid InfoTech, Easynet.com, Webbangladesh.com, E-way, DNS and many more.

Chittagong Online Limited introduced caller ID enabled authentication for the first time in the country that allows users to restrict phone numbers from where they can access the internet. Another new feature they have introduced is the E1 technology that lets the dial up users to enjoy 56Kbps full duplex connectivity.

"One service that we could adopt quite cheaply but still lacking is the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) which could allow the users to make optimum use of the telephone lines that currently leave two third of the total frequency unused which could be utilised on internet and data transfer along with telephone service at the same time", the Minister explained.

This fair at the port city witnessed almost twice as much as response that it had received in Dhaka in 2003.