In the early 2000s, South Asian countries were lagging far behind other parts of Asia in making full use of information and communication technology (ICT) for their economic and social development. To address the situation, the ICT Working Group of the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) program, then covering Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal, at its third meeting in Dhaka in 2006, agreed to develop the SASEC information highway, which would deliver and facilitate modern broadband information, communication, and knowledge services within and across borders to governments, businesses, research institutes, and rural and remote communities.
In support of the initiative, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved in December 2007 grants of $4.7 million to Bhutan and $9 million to Nepal and a loan of $3.1 million to Bangladesh for the SASEC Information Highway Project. The governments of the four SASEC countries, including India, were to finance up to 30% of the total project cost. ADB also provided $4.4 million in regional technical assistance (TA) to support capacity development in engineering as well as business management and development technologies.
Overall, the project aimed to enhance the benefits of ICT and regional cooperation for inclusive growth and poverty reduction by increasing the supply of affordable broadband, skilled ICT
manpower, and local content and e-applications, with a special focus on the needs of the poor.
Its intended outcome was for ICT to be more accessible, affordable, inclusive, sustainable,
and useful to remote and rural communities, entrepreneurs, and research and training institutes in SASEC countries. The outcome was to be achieved through three outputs: the SASEC regional network, the village network, and the research and training network. The regional network was expected to replace microwave facilities, providing efficient access to submarine cables for Bhutan and Nepal thus lowering internet connecting costs and increasing service reliability and competition. The village network was to establish (i) 110 community e-centers (CECs), 30 each in Bhutan and Nepal and 25 each in Bangladesh and India, (ii) rural wireless broadband connectivity to link the CECs to the regional network, and (iii) a village portal and knowledge database system. Project benefits were to be maximized through the integration of the regional and village networks, resulting in improved access of rural communities to information and economic opportunities.
The project was innovative, being the first ADB-assisted regional ICT development project as well as the first regional project in South Asia. Its attempt to facilitate the flow and integration of information, ideas, knowledge, and goods and services among SASEC countries was envisaged to lay the foundation for future projects of the same nature. It substantially achieved its output targets; however, as it took nearly a decade for these outputs to be delivered, their contributions to the much-improved ICT connectivity and accessibility in the project areas cannot be fully assessed.
The project experienced inordinate delays in all countries, most of which were due to the prolonged process of agreeing on the overall implementation arrangements, governed by three layers of multilateral, bilateral, and in-country agreements. By the time the institutional setup was finalized, with the signing of the bilateral agreements with service agencies in April 2012, the project was already outpaced by the rapid ICT advancement in the region, in terms of both technology and private sector-led arrangements for expanding cross-border internet connections. The 4.5 year-lapse between project financing approval and the establishment of the implementation and post-project operational arrangements was enough to diminish the value addition of the project outputs, with the number of fixed broadband subscriptions increasing five times and mobile cellular subscriptions three times in South Asia from 2007 to 2012. During the same period, both Bangladesh and Bhutan recorded an annual 69% growth rate in broadband subscriptions, and in Nepal it was 84%. Mobile subscriptions grew by an annual average of 23% in Bangladesh, 30% in Bhutan, and 38% in India.
The project inadequately considered the predominance and greater adaptability of the private sector to drive the rapidly changing ICT development. Moreover, its design was not guided by detailed demand analyses and instead assumed that all the internet data traffic exchanged at the time through very small aperture terminals would switch entirely to the regional network. The regional network did not achieve a permanent, functional regional internet connectivity. Nevertheless, the project saw some positive developments in individual countries, especially in Bhutan that, as of 2017, had expanded the CECs to 210 communities, making the services on the internet more accessible to the country’s rural and remote areas. Its objectives continue to be relevant as the provision of stable, affordable and inclusive internet connection, especially in the most remote and rural areas has not been fully achieved in the SASEC countries, and remains a key for inclusive development.
The project had Bangladesh’s Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology, Bhutan’s Ministry of Information and Communication, and Nepal’s Ministry of Information and Communication as executing agencies (EAs). Service agencies, local private entrepreneurs and internet service providers, and ICT research institutes were engaged to implement the various project components.
