Internet connectivity will get a boost after the launch of Southeast Asia, Middle East and Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE) cable 6, the IT 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-kilometer high-capacity fiber network linking Pakistan with countries between Singapore and France,” the ministry statement said.
The cable has a total capacity of more than 100 terabits per second and will provide “one of the lowest latency routes between Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe.”
He added that Pakistan has been allocated a total of 13.2 tbps, of which 4 tbps will be activated immediately, expanding the country’s international bandwidth capacity and improving support for cloud services, data centers, fintech, e-commerce, streaming and the overall digital economy.
The press release added that SEA-ME-WE 6 features “more fiber pairs and more than double the capacity” of previous SEA-ME-WE systems, improving resilience and diversification on high-traffic routes between Asia and Europe via trans-Egyptian geodiversified crossings and landing points.
“The system enables rapid scalability, better failover protection, and lower total network ownership costs for participating service providers, while adding an essential new layer of redundancy to the global Internet backbone.”
He added that the consortium involved in the project included Transworld Associates of Pakistan, 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 in Karachi.
In December, Transworld Associates connected the Africa-2 cable to its landing station in Karachi.
Currently, six cables, with a capacity of 13tpbs, carry internet to Pakistan: Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1), Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SMW4) and India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE), managed by PTCL; and Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (SMW-5) and Transworld Associates 1 (TWA-1), operated by Transworld Associates.
Cyber Internet Services operates the sixth cable called Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE).
