Dhaka, Sep 6 - Two Indian telecom majors have sought a corridor through Bangladesh to reach the isolated north-eastern region and in return offered a stand-by submarine cable.

Indian telecom giants - Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications (RCom) - have submitted a joint proposal in this regard to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), according to The Daily Star newspaper.

In return for allowing access to the north-eastern states, Bangladesh will get a wider link as the Indian companies have already connected with Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan and have offered to link with Myanmar, the daily quoted officials as saying.

If any deal is signed, Bangladesh can use the companies' undersea cable network as an alternative to the lone submarine cable it has from Southeast Asia.

Exclusive dependence on the submarine cable system linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Gulf has often caused snarl-ups, snapping Bangladesh's telecom and Internet ties with the outside world.

Experts think that such an initiative can relieve Bangladesh from repeated disruption of undersea cable, which inflicts a huge loss to the country's information and communication technology sector, said Sunday.

The two Indian companies are ready to link with any Bangladeshi fibre optic operator to provide telecom services to Indian states: Assam, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.

Bharti and RCom want to build a fibre optic link to Assam from Meherpur on the Kolkata-Meherpur-Dhaka-Haflong route with an option of an alternative route through Kolkata-Meherpur-Dhaka-Comilla-Agartala.