Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar said that digital innovation will be the main force of development in the coming days. We are committed to encouraging home networks to use digital technology as a development tool. IoT technology should be applied in agriculture and fisheries. The minister urged the concerned people including technologists and digital technology industry to take a leading role in this matter.
The minister opined so, during a meeting with the delegation of technology company Nokia Bangladesh regarding ‘Nokia 5-G Capability and Technical Collaboration’ at his office at the Bangladesh Secretariat in Dhaka today.
Daniel Jagger, vice president of Nokia Southeast Asia, led a two-member Nokia delegation at the meeting. Another member of the delegation was Nokia Bangladesh Country Head Md. Ariful Islam. In the meeting, issues related to bilateral interests, especially development in the telecommunication technology sector, were discussed.
Post and Telecommunication Minister highlighted the need of 5-G mobile technology to develop digital technology in the country and said, 4-G technology is for everyone but 5-G technology is an industrial product. This technology is for health, education, agriculture, fisheries and industrial sectors. Bangladesh entered the 5-G era in continuation of the visionary program announced by the leader Sheikh Hasina in 2008 to build Digital Bangladesh.
This pioneer of digital technology development said, ‘It is a matter of pride for us that many developed countries of the world could not enter into the 5-G era, Bangladesh, a once agrarian economy that missed the three industrial revolutions of the past, is moving parallel to the advanced world in digital technology by overcoming the backwardness of 324 years in technology. Bringing mobile phones within the reach of the common people by granting license to the operators and bringing the computers within the purchasing capacity of the common people by withdrawing the VAT-tax from the computers is the result of the continuation of the implementation of the Digital Bangladesh program since 2009.
According to the available data, 5G has been commercially launched in 87 countries around the world. According to GSS data, by the end of June 2022, 496 operators in 150 countries around the world are experimentally investing in 5G networks. According to the data, between 2022 and 2025, one billion 5G connections will be installed and 4G connections will begin to decline.
During this period, the 3G connection adoption rate will come down to below 20 percent. By this time, global mobile broadband connections will reach 8 billion and 5G connections will reach 20 percent. In the world in 2022-23, mobile internet subscribers will be 4.5 billion and mobile subscribers will be 5.5 billion. Between 2024 and 25, the world will have 2 billion 5G connections. During this period, mobile broadband adoption rate will be 95 percent.
In 2021, the contribution of the mobile industry to the world GDP was 4.4 trillion US dollars, which will exceed 4.9 trillion US dollars in 2025. In 2024-25, the mobile ecosystem will directly employ 12 million people and 14 million more indirectly in the world.