Given the size of its population and Internet users in the country, Bhutan will potentially have one of the world’s highest international internet bandwidth per inhabitant and internet user, if things materialize as per the plan.

In a recent move towards attaining that goal, Bhutan Telecom Ltd. (BTL) is set to provide in total 330 Mbps bandwidth for international Internet links – a significant increase of 220 Mbps.

BTL has established an entirely new fiber circuit and replaced 45 Mbps link with an increased capacity of 155Mbps. This alone is a significant 110 Mbps increase and was carried out to resolve the near congestion of inbound Internet traffic to Bhutan.

In order to provide a full network diversity and redundancy to achieve high reliability, the new fiber circuit is leased through Bharti Airtel Limited, one of Asia’s leading integrated telecom services providers with operations in India and Sri Lanka.

BTL also has the other optical fiber for international internet link of 45 Mbps capacity connecting to Hong Kong which is planned for an upgrade within January 2010 to the same capacity of 155 Mbps.

In addition to the fiber circuits, BTL also has 20 Mbps bandwidth of satellite links, 10 Mbps each to UK and US for international Internet connectivity. These satellite links are not only actively used, but they also serve mainly as backup in the event of fiber cuts on both London and Hong Kong links.

BTL has Point of Presence (PoP) in both London and Hong Kong where they peer with bigger global Internet Service Providers. They peer with the world’s largest Internet exchange-London Internet Exchange (LINX) in London and the Hong Kong Internet Exchange (KHIX) in Hong Kong.

Peering is done to exchange Internet traffic on mutual agreement between the parties for free of cost. For example, Bhutan Telecom peers with Google both at LINX and HKIX thereby making Google search faster as the access to Google is accomplished directly.

The increased capacity would enable wider range of opportunities in ICT development and business. BTL’s Internet users will experience faster Internet access and those watching or downloading videos online would also particularly be able to do so with lesser jitter and smoother viewing, according to a press statement from the BTL.

In order to utilize the availability of high capacity bandwidth on international Internet links, BTL also aims to continue rolling out and expand coverage of broadband Internet and other high-speed Internet access across the country with more emphasis on the remote areas wherever feasible.