Bangabandhu Satellite-1: What did the white elephant really deliver?
The satellite incurs an annual loss of Tk66 crore. Yet, the Hasina regime had plans to launch a second satellite
It was 12 May 2018. A day when Bangladesh made history by launching the Bangabandhu Satellite-1, its first geostationary communications and broadcasting satellite, from the Kennedy Space Center in the US.
Sheikh Hasina said at that time, "Today, the flag of Bangladesh soared into space. From today, we are proud members of the satellite club."
Indeed, Bangladesh became the 57th country to have its own satellite in space. It was a proud moment for the nation. Or at least, the Awami League government made us feel as such.
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However, six years on, the political landscape has changed. Hasina and her government have been ousted. All her sugar-coated development stories are being debunked. And now it is time to discuss this satellite project — what has it really delivered? Or was it just another white elephant of the regime?
Among the highly expensive projects initiated during the Hasina government, the Bangabandhu Satellite-1 was one of them, having been launched at a cost of nearly Tk3,000 crore.
A recent report by Bangla daily Prothom Alo revealed that the satellite incurs an annual loss of Tk66 crore, taking depreciation costs into account. The Bangladesh Satellite Company Limited (BSCL) has not made any profits or filed any tax returns for five years.
Bangabandhu Satellite-1 is supposed to function for 15 years, with 2033 supposed to mark the end of its life. So, the time for recovering project costs is also running out.
According to BTRC's project report, the satellite has 40 transponders (26 Ku-Band and 14 C-Band). Of these, a total of 20 are designated for local use, while the other 20 can be used outside the country.
The satellite covers not only Bangladesh but also India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
Foreign currency could be earned by renting out transponders abroad, but Bangladesh failed to capture these markets.
Almost all of the 20 transponders reserved for local usage are being used, but the transponders for other countries have yet to be used at full capacity. So far, only 59% of the C-band and 25% of the Ku-band frequency has been sold.
Most of its clients are local TV stations, making it impossible to recover the substantial costs.
"High-quality coverage is available in the Indo-Filipino territory. The authorities need to quickly find potential clients and buyers in that region. In other countries, such commercial arrangements are usually made before launching a communication satellite. This did not happen in our case," Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, an engineer and author, told The Business Standard. He is currently the Senior Software Solution Architect at Vodafone Netherlands.
According to him, the promised capabilities of the Bangabandhu Satellite-1 turned out to be mostly unrealistic.
"It was designed as a communications satellite for services like DTH (Direct-to-Home) TV broadcasts, VSAT private networks for voice, data, and internet, limited broadband, and point-to-point data services. The satellite's transceivers and transponders were built accordingly, but it can't perform tasks like image capture, flood monitoring, weather forecasting, or river and coastal mapping," he added.
The annual depreciation cost of the satellite is about Tk186 crore, according to Prothom Alo. However, regulator BSCL hides the depreciation cost in its annual reports to present it as a profitable venture.
According to Taiyeb, corruption within the BSCL is another reason behind losses. Their misleading business plan claimed costs could be recovered in 10 years by renting transponders abroad at high prices.
"The satellite is used for DTH broadcasting in Bangladesh. However, renting transponders from abroad would have cost only a third of what the satellite expenses are now. Therefore, the Bangabandhu Satellite has failed as a business case. To manage costs and reduce losses, the company should cut waste, merge with other organisations, and improve efficiency," Taiyeb explained.
For a cyclone-prone country like Bangladesh, Taiyeb suggests, a weather and earth observation satellite would have been more useful as the first satellite.
Furthermore, though the first satellite was not profitable, the Awami League government had vowed to launch a second one.
"Unless launching a new satellite is much cheaper than buying this data over 20 years, Bangladesh doesn't need a second satellite. Any decision about a second satellite should be made only after a transparent business case study."
In 2022, a memorandum of understanding was signed with Russia's state-run space agency, Glavkosmos, for the launch of Bangabandhu Satellite-2. A couple of months before Hasina's government was ousted, former State Minister for Posts, Telecommunications, and Information Technology, Zunaid Ahmed Palak hinted that the second satellite would be launched within the next four to five years.
However, as the political landscape has shifted, the Bangabandhu Satellite-2 is reportedly being put on hold by the interim government.
Questions have also been raised about the agreement made with Russia. In particular, Russia demanded high interest rates on the soft loan, which is above 5%. Soft loans usually have an interest rate between 1% and 1.5%. Satellite officials suspect that there might have been financial irregularities by the Awami League government.
Prominent telecom expert, late Abu Saeed Khan, former senior policy fellow of LIRNEasia, earlier told BBC Bangla that moving towards launching a second satellite without making the previous one profitable would be "utter foolishness".
"The second one is supposed to be an earth observation satellite. However, tasks like coastal image processing, flood monitoring, water level measurement, weather forecasting, locating fishermen, monitoring river routes, tracking waterlogging, and mapping damaged infrastructure or croplands can all be done using affordable satellite data available internationally," Taiyeb said.
"Unless launching a new satellite is much cheaper than buying this data over 20 years, Bangladesh doesn't need a second satellite. Any decision about a second satellite should be made only after a transparent business case study," he concluded.
