Eight internationally reputed telecoms equipment vendors are contesting to supply the peripheral equipment of the project.

The companies are Lucent and Tyco of the US, NEC, Fujitsu and Mitsubishi of Japan, Nortel Networks of Canada and NSW and Siemens of Germany.

BTTB Chairman SATM Badrul Hoque opened the bids at his office in the presence of board members, director of the project and other high officials.

Globally, 12 vendors dropped bids in Rome in response to the international bidding to set up the network.

The evaluation of the US$ 750 million submarine cable project will be carried out simultaneously in the countries brought together by a consortium.

The international bidding of the project was opened in the Italian capital of Rome on Monday.

The SEA-ME-WE4 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4) consortium is expected to complete the project by July 2005.

State-owned telecoms providers of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy and France along with troubled American firm WorldCom and Indian firm Bharti are members of the consortium.

Indonesia withdrew its membership when SingTel of Singapore acquired major shares of Indosat, the state-owned telecoms agency of Indonesia.

Meanwhile, the dominant carriers of Thailand, Algeria and Tunisia have expressed their desire to join the consortium. Cable and Wireless of the UK and Reliance Group of India are also interested in being connected with the submarine cable network.

The consortium will accept these new aspirants if it faces shortage of fund.

Sources said despite global downturn in the telecoms investment, the consortium members have already committed 84 per cent of the estimated US$ 750 million project cost. Bangladesh has earmarked US$ 65 million as BTTB's contribution.

The contract to build this cable network will be awarded to the successful bidder in March 2004. The contractor will have to commission the system within 16 months that means Bangladesh will be terrestrially connected with the high-speed global telecoms network not later than July 2005.

Meanwhile, the BTTB has shifted the location of its submarine cable's landing station from Chittagong to Cox's Bazar.

Sources said high risk of cable cut because of fishing and anchoring on the Chittagong coast prompted the shift.

The BTTB is now going to invite an international tender to lay 160 kilometres of optical fibre cable from Cox's Bazar to Chittagong.

The government has earmarked Tk 40 crore for the project. Initially it will be equipped with 622 megabyte per second (Mbps) capacity to carry 8,064 voice circuits.

It will be eventually upgraded to 1,000 Mbps to handle 129,024 simultaneous international phone calls.

Currently the BTTB handles only 3,333 international phone calls at a time through its satellite circuits.