The winners of ‘Bangladesh ICT Skills Competition 2021’—organised by Huawei in partnership with Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC)—have been announced today.

The seventh edition of BASIS Outsourcing Award was launched yesterday aiming at bringing more youths into freelancing and creating skilled manpower to achieve a $5 billion export target from software, IT-enabled services and digital devices by 2025.

The government is set to provide preference to local IT and software companies in public procurements for setting up digital systems.

Over the last couple of years, Bangladesh saw a growing demand for broadband internet connections.

DataBird, a Bangladeshi IT company working on building an internet ecosystem, recently celebrated the winning of six innovative ideas at the Grand Finale of DataBird LaunchPad 2021, held yesterday at the BCC auditorium, ICT Division, Dhaka.

The country’s call centre industry is set to undergo fast growth as the government alongside private entities such as banks has started to provide many services through helplines.

Broadband users will not have to pay any bill in a month if their internet connection remains down for three consecutive days, said the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).

Bangladesh’s ICT sector is flourishing on the back of artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) and big data warehousing, said Farhana A Rahman, senior vice-president of the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS).

The government is planning to run a trial of 5G technology through Teletalk on December 12 or 16 this year, said Mustafa Jabbar, minister for posts, telecommunications and information technology, yesterday.

Over 72 per cent of youths out of the 86 per cent who have smartphones have access to the internet.

Prime Minister’s ICT Affairs Advisers Sajeeb Wazed Joy yesterday said that the next step of digital Bangladesh is developing a cashless society to ensure transparency, accountability and mobility in financial transactions.

Women in Bangladesh have increased and diversified their use of mobile internet services ever since the Covid-19 outbreak began as social distancing restrictions in particular have led to a rise in video calls, social media use and viewing of online videos, according to a survey.

Social media users are seemingly sceptical of the government’s move to introduce home-grown alternatives to Facebook, WhatsApp and other digital platforms.

A demo-day and closing ceremony of Korea’s six-month-long mentoring programme for five Bangladesh startup teams were held virtually yesterday with the presence of Ambassador Lee Jang-keun and ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak.

Pressure is rising on Big Tech firms, signaling tougher regulation in Washington and elsewhere that could lead to the breakup of the largest platforms.

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) has to be increased to create skilled human resources to address the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, according to speakers at a webinar held yesterday.

The number of tenders invited through the e-GP portal crossed 5 lakh yesterday having a total value of about Tk 5,10,499 crore. 

The number of broadband internet connections has surpassed the 1 crore mark in June for the first time as a vast number of people now rely on the internet due to the pandemic which propelled work from home practices and remote learning.

Technology has a great influence on the working environment especially during this pandemic time as people are now being able to work remotely instead of their physical presence at the workplace, speakers said at a virtual programme today.

Like a million others, Ridoy Saha was rendered unemployed within weeks after Bangladesh introduced a nationwide lockdown in March last year to limit the spread of coronavirus.