Internet connectivity is set to get a boost after the launch of the South-East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE) 6 cable, the information technology ministry said on Saturday.
“Pakistan has strengthened its global digital connectivity with the deployment of the SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable system, a 19,200-km high-capacity fibre network linking Pakistan to countries between Singapore and France,” said the statement from the ministry.
The cable has a total capacity of over 100 terabit per second and it will provide “one of the lowest-latency routes between Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe”.
It added that Pakistan has been allocated a total of 13.2tbps, with 4tbps being activated immediately – expanding the country’s international bandwidth capacity and enhancing support for cloud services, data centres, fintech, e-commerce, streaming, and the broader digital economy.
The press release added that SEA-ME-WE 6 features “more fibre pairs and more than double the capacity” of previous SEA-ME-WE systems, enhancing resilience and diversification across high-traffic Asia-Europe routes through trans-Egypt geo-diversified crossings and landing points.
“The system enables rapid scalability, improved fault protection and lower total network ownership costs for participating service providers, while adding an essential new redundancy layer to the global internet backbone.”
It added that the consortium involved in the project included Pakistan’s Transworld Associates, Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel, Dhiraagu, Djibouti Telecom, Mobily, Orange, Singtel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia and Telin.
In February, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd successfully landed the Africa-1 submarine internet cable at Karachi.
In December, Transworld Associates linked the Africa-2 cable to its landing station in Karachi.
Currently, six cables, with a capacity of 13tpbs, bring internet to Pakistan: Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1), South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SMW4) and India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE), managed by PTCL; and South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 5 (SMW-5) and Transworld Associates 1 (TWA-1), operated by Transworld Associates.
Cyber Internet Services operates the sixth cable named Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE).