Covered by Signals, Excluded from Access

Consider a rural youth with full mobile signal bars on a handset, yet repeatedly failing to submit an online employment application due to erratic data latency. Next door, a student faces a different barrier: coverage is robust, but the household lacks the disposable income to purchase recurring data bundles. In national administrative statistics, both individuals are categorized as living within the perimeter of advanced network coverage. In reality, how meaningfully are they participating in the digital economy? In strategic evaluations of Bangladesh's digital transformation, this systemic disconnect demands urgent policy scrutiny.

The extensive rollout of mobile cellular infrastructure across Bangladesh represents a monumental technical achievement. However, leveraging this infrastructure requires transitioning from nominal geographical presence to genuine, accessible utility for everyday citizens. Target 9.c of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) articulates this precise imperative: expanding access to information and communications technology while striving to deliver universal and affordable internet access across least developed countries. The target deadline has elapsed; a rigorous accounting of realized commitments versus persistent deficits is now essential.

A structural clarification regarding empirical metrics is necessary. Progress under SDG Target 9.c is monitored via Indicator 9.c.1, which measures the proportion of the population covered by a mobile network broken down by technology generation (such as 3G, 4G, or 5G). This index is derived by dividing the population residing within operational signal footprints by the total population, multiplied by 100. Consequently, an individual who owns no phone, holds no SIM registration, and has never accessed the web is statistically logged as "covered" simply because radio frequency waves propagate across their dwelling.

The mathematical parameters of generational thresholds must also be interpreted accurately. Under standardized ITU definitions, metrics labeled "at least 3G" encompass 3G and all higher evolutionary standards; the identical rule governs "at least 4G." These percentages are progressive subsets and cannot be aggregated. Furthermore, the indicator evaluates human residential settlements rather than total national landmass, leaving uninhabited or agrarian zones outside its analytical purview.

According to the ITU DataHub, approximately 99.6 percent of Bangladesh’s population was covered by at least a 4G mobile network in 2024. Concurrently, the National SDG Tracker records national 4G coverage for the identical period at 99.3029 percent. Both datasets reflect near-universal network availability. Nevertheless, the minor divergence between sovereign and multilateral datasets warrants transparent institutional reconciliation.

A more serious statistical anomaly appears within the sovereign SDG Tracker, where national 4G coverage for 2025 is recorded at 100.0117 percent. Mathematically, the proportion of a defined population cannot exceed 100 percent. Auditing and correcting such data discrepancies is essential, as effective capital allocations and policy interventions cannot be built upon flawed baselines. Rigorous data integrity is a baseline condition for credible discourse on national developmental progress.

Contrasting infrastructural reach with authentic adoption reveals the structural usage gap. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) Fourth Quarter Labour Force Survey report released on October 16, 2026, the proportion of the population aged five and older actively using the internet stands at 59.2 percent. While overall mobile phone usage registers at 89.6 percent, individual phone ownership drops to 65.6 percent. Relying on shared community or household devices differs fundamentally from enjoying individual, unconstrained digital autonomy.

A methodological caution is necessary: subtracting 2026 adoption figures from 2024 coverage percentages does not yield an absolute statistical usage gap, as the analytical cohorts and temporal boundaries differ. Yet, placing these indicators in juxtaposition clarifies an undeniable reality: the physical arrival of radio waves leaves the hardest work of socioeconomic inclusion unfinished.

The underlying structural bottlenecks require granular segmentation. Certain remote pockets lack base transceiver stations entirely. In other zones, towers exist, but peak-hour traffic congests backhaul links. Elsewhere, first-rate networks operate seamlessly, yet surrounding households cannot afford capable smartphones or recurring subscriptions. These distinct conditions cannot be cured through uniform policy. Physical blackspots demand capital expenditure; degraded QoS requires spectrum refarming and optical fiber backhaul; and socioeconomic exclusion requires targeted affordability interventions.

National aggregate statistics frequently obscure marginal vulnerabilities. Network operators can rapidly expand gross population coverage by densifying base stations across high-density urban corridors. Conversely, sparsely populated riverine islands (chars) or indigenous hill communities offer minimal commercial return on investment, depressing private capital deployment despite acute civic needs. The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) should publish granular, interactive coverage and QoS maps at the upazila and union levels. Critical public facilities—including primary clinics, educational institutions, and flood shelters—must be systematically audited.

Quality of Service parameters must be rendered transparent and intelligible to consumers. Metrics detailing indoor signal attenuation, sustained throughput during evening peak hours, and mean time between service disruptions provide actionable consumer intelligence that advertised theoretical downlink speeds obscure. Regulators must pair self-reported operator data with independent field-level drive tests and public grievance telemetry.

This requires looking past raw tower counts. Without high-capacity optical fiber backhaul connecting rural towers to core networks, adequate spectrum allocations, and grid power reliability, modern broadband performance remains unachievable. Expanding passive infrastructure sharing models and enforcing competitive dynamics across mobile network operators and tower companies can suppress operational expenditures without sacrificing network resilience.

The economics of retail data pricing also require fundamental recalibration. Promoting an exceptionally low average price per gigabyte does not guarantee affordability for the bottom quintile. Low-income households reliant on volatile daily wages cannot absorb the upfront cost of high-volume bundles. Furthermore, strict expiration policies that forfeit unused megabytes inflate the effective cost of access. Factoring in handset amortization, battery replacement, and charging expenses, digital affordability must be assessed across the total cost of ownership.

Fiscal and taxation frameworks must align with this reality. Regulators must verify whether wholesale tariff cuts and spectrum tax amortizations directly translate into lower consumer prices. Simultaneously, retail tariff interventions must not deter network deployment in underserved border and rural geographies. Fiscal policy must holistically balance public revenue collection, operator investment returns, and consumer purchasing power.

Publicly subsidized infrastructure programs must maintain uncompromising operational accountability. Measuring the success of initiatives financed through the Social Obligation Fund (SOF) requires looking beyond base stations erected to evaluate active subscriber adoption and multi-year maintenance arrangements. Connecting rural schools and health complexes requires confirming that broadband links remain functional and funded long after official project commissioning.

Digital capacity-building initiatives must similarly shift from theoretical certifications toward pragmatic economic outcomes. Training should directly empower a smallholder farmer to independently monitor wholesale prices, a female micro-entrepreneur to conduct secure mobile financial transactions, and a young job-seeker to navigate digital portals safely. Developing operational instincts around phishing detection and cryptographic hygiene is an indispensable element of functional digital literacy.

Intra-household device distribution remains deeply asymmetric. The physical presence of a single connected handset within a family does not guarantee equitable utility for female members, adolescents, or persons with disabilities. When targeted digital harassment drives women to deactivate their accounts, the developmental value of connectivity is lost. Accessible, gender-sensitive grievance redressal mechanisms are essential to prevent digital disenfranchisement.

Community radio stations, grassroots civic organizations, and local educational centers are uniquely positioned to bridge this divide. Delivering localized cyber safety literacy, clarifying reporting pathways, and elevating community grievances to administrative authorities offers practical protection. Integrating community radio broadcasts with low-bandwidth SMS and interactive voice response (IVR) platforms ensures that digitally illiterate populations remain informed.

In a disaster-vulnerable nation like Bangladesh, telecommunications resilience faces its ultimate test during severe meteorological shocks. Base station availability during standard conditions is insufficient; operational viability during cyclones or flash floods—when utility grids collapse—must be engineered through industrial battery backups, renewable micro-grids, and redundant transmission routing. Periodic emergency simulations must confirm that evacuation centers and triage points maintain uncompromised uplink capabilities.

Network resilience is equally inseparable from fundamental civil rights. The arbitrary deployment of centralized internet shutdowns must be structurally curtailed. Any administrative restriction on telecommunications must undergo rigorous legal scrutiny, proving strict necessity, proportionality, and statutory alignment. For an entire population reliant on digital rails for commerce, education, and health, preserving network continuity is a binding constitutional obligation.

Decisions surrounding 5G commercialization should undergo comparable utilitarian scrutiny. High-density deployments should target specialized industrial economic zones, deep-sea logistics hubs, and advanced research clusters where demonstrable demand exists, while public policy concentrates on optimizing nationwide 4G coverage and affordability for the general public.

Institutional mandates must be strictly delineated. The BTRC must guarantee technical performance data and transparent QoS compliance; the BBS must deliver disaggregated sociodemographic metrics detailing usage and digital inequality; and line ministries must budget for measurable digital inclusion outcomes. Tracking the core infrastructural index 9.c.1 alongside complementary SDG indicators on individual internet usage, digital literacy, and sex-disaggregated device ownership will clarify where structural interventions are required.

An actionable roadmap can be executed within the next six months: reconcile sovereign SDG data anomalies, publish union-level QoS diagnostic registries, and formulate transparent baseline data packages for marginal demographics. Establishing annual independent multi-stakeholder hearings will reinforce transparency. Until structural universal access is achieved, direct in-person options for critical public services must remain accessible alongside automated digital portals.

Bangladesh’s immediate mandate is translating network coverage into meaningful socio-economic agency. When every student can submit an examination form without network latency, every woman entrepreneur can securely manage digital commerce, and every coastal household receives timely cyclone alerts, the true promise of SDG Target 9.c will finally be realized.

Author |   Chief Executive Officer, Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC); Global Ambassador for Responsible Artificial Intelligence and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)

[Editor's Note]

In this era of digital transformation, it is crucial to expose the gap between a country's network signal coverage and the effective digital inclusion of its general populace. The author meticulously demonstrates, using institutional statistics and the framework of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 9.c), how nearly 40% of the population remains outside the practical benefits of internet use, despite almost 100% 4G coverage. Sustainable digital societies cannot be built merely by increasing the number of towers without addressing issues like inability to afford devices, deceptive data pack expiry terms, weak indoor network signals, and gender-based discrimination. This article, published with editorial standardization, aims to ensure transparency in policymaking and empower marginalized communities digitally.