Prime Minister Narendra Modi will today inaugurate broadband connectivity to North-East states via Bangladesh to strengthen telecom services in the region. Under the project, an international gateway for broadband connectivity will be set up at Agartala in which connectivity will be provided through Bangladesh under an agreement between state-run BSNL and Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company limited. The agreement was signed between India and Bangladesh for this project at Dhaka on June last year in the presence of Prime Ministers of both the countries.<br/><br/>The new link will be now a short route cable between Cox Bazar cable landing station in Bangladesh to Agartala through Akhaura. Before this link, telecom connectivity for networks was provided to North East from Chennai via Kolkata. The cost of the project is around 19 crore rupees and BSNL will bear annual operational expenditure of around seven crore rupees from its own resources.<br/><br/>