ISPs denied entry to Khawaja Tower, internet lies disrupted

People have been experiencing a disrupted internet service across the country since the fire at Khawaja Tower in Dhaka on Thursday afternoon. The building is home to data centres of some top international internet gateways (IIG). 

The internet service providers (ISPs) said it is possible to restore the service within a short time by activating the data centres in the building, but the authorities are restricting them from entering the building. 

The building caught fire at around 4:45 pm on Thursday, leaving at least three people dead. The authorities doused the blaze completely on Friday morning, but the internet service did not return to normalcy until the immediate night.

Inspecting the site on Friday morning, Najmul Karim Bhuiyan, secretary general of the Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB), told the media that the data centre equipment is protected and supposed to suffer no damages.

“The data centres could not be activated as there is no permission to enter the building due to security issues. Internet service would return to normalcy today had at least one of the data centres been activated,” he said, adding it is possible to run the data centre by generators. 

Ashraful Alam, a staff of internet service provider, Link3 Technologies that operates from the Khawaja tower, said it is tough to enter the building now, due to smoke and stench. It might take two or three days to put everything in order.

However, he echoed the remark that the data centres are supposed to remain undamaged despite the fire.

The fire incident led to a nationwide disruption in internet as well as mobile network service. The operators said the building accommodates an inter-connection exchange (ICX), a network infrastructure where all the internet service providers exchange the internet traffic in-between. If the ICX stops working, it disrupts not only internet services but also mobile networks. 

According to ISPAB, the fire disrupted 40 per cent of broadband internet services across the nation. However, the situation in Dhaka has been fixed to some extent. 

ISPAB president Imdadul Haque said if they are granted permission to enter the building, it is possible to bring the situation to a tolerable level. The ISPs receive bandwidth from IIGs, and Khawaja Tower houses 10 to 12 data centers of top ISPs.