Turkish company Hesfibel will have to finish installation of the 160-km link by November. Hesfibel was the third lowest bidder in the second tender for the optical fibre link project.

Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), the project implementing authority, found the two other lowest bidders non-responsive, says Hasan Mansur, secretary of the telecoms ministry.

"We are already behind the schedule to be able to use the submarine cable," Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman, who is also the chairman of the purchase committee, told the press following a meeting that gave the Turkish firm the go-ahead for the bid.

The first tender was cancelled by the government following reports run by The Daily Star about a major corruption in which BTTB was about to award the contract to German company Siemens at a price Tk 17 crore higher than that of Canadian Alcatel, the lowest responsive bidder. Siemens had asked for Tk 47 crore to do the job.

Later, the government as a punishment made the BTTB chairman officer on special duty (OSD).

The re-tender for the project was floated a couple of months ago. The corruption attempt has delayed the project by several months as the installation was supposed to be completed by July.

The optical fibre link will connect Bangladesh to the international submarine line, which will be available at Cox's Bazar within the next month. An international consortium is installing the half-billion dollar South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe- 4 (SEA-ME-WE-4) submarine line.

The submarine system will span around 20,000 km across the eastern and western worlds to set an ultra fast terabit per second connectivity. Bangladesh will get 10 gigabytes of bandwidth, which is enough for the country's Internet and telephony demands for the next 10 years.

Presently, it consumes about 150 megabytes of bandwidth.

The purchase committee also approved a Tk 25.49-crore digital telephone installation project to be implemented in Chittagong, Khulna and Sylhet divisions. National Constructions Ltd, a local company, has won the contract for the project to be funded by the South Korean government.

Besides, the committee approved an additional cost of 1 million euros for the Chittagong Wasa Madhurgaht Water Treatment Plant project. The contract for this project was awarded to Italian company Tesp in 2001, but the company has since been arguing for an increase in the project cost by 1 million euros.

The committee also approved appointment of a consultant for design and supervision of the Asian Development Bank-funded Emergency Damage Rehabilitation Assistance Project 2004. The consultant will be hired at a cost of $ 13.5 million.