Palak committed to ensure affordable broadband internet everywhere

The state minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak committed to ensure broadband internet at low cost even at the remote areas of the country. He made this commitment before inaugurating the country's first cross-platform app marketplace AppCity at a restaurant in the capital on Tuesday.

State Minister for Telecom and ICT termed this initiative as smart transformation in the inaugural function held with selected electronic media workers. While speaking as the chief guest, Zunaid Ahmed Palak said that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina now wants to see a corruption-free, paperless, interconnected and interoperable smart government. That government will become invisible and bring all services to citizens at their fingertips. Similarly, the ICT advisor wants to deliver individual government services to every citizen. Currently there are more than 13 crore internet users in the country. We will deliver high-speed reliable broadband internet connection in cities, villages, mountains, islands or remote areas. Smart government will cater to the needs of citizens as their own government for each individual.

The state minister highlighted the achievement of the three targets set by the government in the current term. He said, we want to create more and more jobs in telecom and ICT; How to increase exports of technology goods and services and attract foreign investment. In this case, Palak also expects that Telenor's Grameenphone will invest more in building Smart Bangladesh.

He said, I request the Grameenphone chairman to consider Bangladesh as a potential country for their future investment. At the same time, more and more innovative and creative solutions like GP Accelerator, GP Academy, Master Class, Smart Future Nation Program, District-to-District Entrepreneurship and AppCity are taken up.

Speaking at the event, Grameenphone Chairman and Head of Telenor Asia Petter-Bore Farberg said, 'AppCity will not only empower developers, but also contribute to the advancement of rich customer experience.

Grameenphone Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Yasir Azman said, “The platform embodies our vision to build a smart, inclusive, secure, and sustainable ecosystem. Not only providing traditional telecommunication services, our aim is to empower the society and build a smart Bangladesh by connecting people.

Grameenphone Chief Marketing Officer Mohammad Sajjad Hasib, Chief Digital Officer Solaiman Alam, Chief Business Officer Dr. Asif Naimur Rashid discussed various services and initiatives of the operator.

Grameenphone said, its app marketplace 'AppCity' is a unified platform that will bring together a variety of applications and software as a service (SaaS) solutions. Operating on both the App Store and API Hub platforms, this marketplace connects both content providers and application developers with individual and corporate customers. A unique feature of AppCity is that it has built-in Android, iOS, and telco API facilities, which are functional on both B2B and B2C platforms. Apart from user ratings, AppCity has also introduced curated expert ratings, which is different from conventional app marketplaces. Apart from telco billing and conventional payment process, the platform also added Mobile Financial Services (MFS) facility considering the convenience of users. The platform has a wider range of payment channels compared to other app marketplaces.