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Internship at TMIB

Internship during the under graduation is a mandatory 6-credit course in IUB and aprerequisite, just prior to your bachelors degree.

It is a fully job-based intensive program, and the internship can be considered as an On-Job training, done in any course-related firm/company, under the supervision of a top-

management / manager (both in public and private sector). Normally it lasts for months

and can be even extended if the performance of the intern is more than/ abovesatisfactory, as evaluated by the employer.

In IUB, students peruse their internship in the financial institutions: Bank or Leasing

Firms, in the Telecom Operators: GP, Bangla Link, Citycell, etc or public companies:Power Development Board, TNT. I along with 3 of my friends had the marvelous

opportunity as we found ourselves finally making it through the doorstep of TMIB,

AKtel, presently known as ROBI.

I can still clearly picture us in the last semester of ETE(Electronics and Telecom

Engineering) in the year 2007, December, waiting for a call for interview from AKtel,with an impatient heart and frantic hopes of a bright career.

And the day finally arrived; we were called for an interview after getting selected in the

written test of NOC (Network Operation Center), Technical Division of TMIB; but juston that day we had our last final exam! What luck! Very fortunately our faculties and the

co-coordinator themselves were so happy that they allowed us to sit for the exam at any

date of convenience.

The interview was great and we came back to Chittagong within the next 12 hours ofattending the interview. Reason: We were told to join immediately within the next 2days!

Thus our journey of first ever professional experience begun with such a dramatic haste,

but there was not a single drop of enthrallment missing! Yes, we were quite exhausted atthe end of the four years enduring engineering tenure, but that was quite nothing to the

mesmerizing challenges we knew were thrown ahead of us to grab on!

Finally we reached our destination: the technical division of TMIB: NOC at MascotPlaza, Uttara, Dhaka.

I was astonished to have found myself as the sole female identity in the whole office! ButI was very much valued for the next 4 months in my department, more than I could

imagine.

There were many slots in NOC: BSS Core, NSS Core, Power and Backbone support and

I was given the single responsibility of creating, updating records and maintaining a

whole new database, then analyze and interpret the records for NOCs Higher

Management.

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The first one week was adjustment periods for the four of us: getting familiarized with

the working environment, colleagues, senior management and officials, in integratingourselves with the corporate practices and organizational cultures, and finally making it

to emerge out as one of THEM!

My other three friends were all assigned with the power slot to handle power failures, in

the network elements, realizing and identifying different fire/smoke alarms, and resolving

them through sending web-sms to the zonal Engineers, at different regions ofBangladesh. Sometimes the NOC official had to run to spot and spend hours as long as

12/20 hours in resolving a critical issue: optical fiber line disruption.

So guys, you can now clearly visualize that we were actually based at the heart / core ofTMIB from where the whole network system of AKtel could be monitored, and

controlled.

Each and every person used to work relentlessly with full heart-felt support and

dedication in providing their valued customers with their much anticipated network

coverage and other value-added services at every corner of the country.I would rather say that these people with facing so many major/critical networks related

problems/failures are the real super-heroes for a service-oriented industry like telecom.

The normal/general mass cannot just imagine the hard slog and the labor given to provide

a clear, smooth operating service to the customers.

We the interns forgot during that 4 months time that we were there merely for a very

short period as learners and wanted to be a proud member of such a reputed multinational

firm. I remember working as late as 9pm-10 pm at night, starting from 9am in the

morning, when there were major node disconnection /power failure issues.

Hardly have we taken any vacation, for we used to enjoy, working and learning new

things daily and also because of the fact that NOC never sleeps.

II heard our supervisor telling us: We work every day, there is nothing called holiday in

NOC, and not even on the eid days. Indeed, true it is very much based on the fact that :mobile usage and operations ever stops even on holidays and customers never stops

making calls, or browsing g the net, whatever be the occasion.

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But even amidst such busy hours, we managed time for ourselves, roaming around in the

city at night after work, occasionally stopping-over the pitha-shop(as it was winter),

sometimes visiting the residential park for an evening walk or sneaking in the lunch-break in the near-by food court.

All in all those four months, were both enthralling and a unique experience for us which Iam really sure would help us in standing competitively at the core professional level,

anywhere around the globe.