ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s international internet capacity is set for a vital upgrade following the launch of the South-East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6) submarine cable system, the Ministry of Information Technology announced today.
The ministry said the country has strengthened its global digital links through the deployment of the 19,200-kilometre high-capacity fibre network.
The cable connects Pakistan to a chain of countries stretching from Singapore to France, forming part of one of the world’s key data routes.
In this regard, SEA-ME-WE 6 delivers a total capacity of more than 100 terabits per second and offers one of the lowest-latency pathways between Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe.
So far, Pakistan has been allocated 13.2 terabits per second, with 4 terabits per second activated immediately.
In addition, the government representatives said this initial activation will expand the country’s bandwidth and strengthen services such as cloud computing, data centres, fintech platforms, e-commerce operations, streaming services and other digital-economy sectors.
Furthermore, the ministry noted that the new system includes more fibre pairs and more than double the capacity of previous SEA-ME-WE routes.
It also increases network resilience by adding trans-Egypt geo-diversified crossings and multiple landing points along high-traffic Asia-Europe corridors.
The improved design is expected to support rapid scalability, reduce network ownership costs for participating operators and provide an additional redundancy layer to the global internet backbone.
The SEA-ME-WE 6 project is supported by an international consortium that includes Pakistan’s Transworld Associates, along with Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel, Dhiraagu, Djibouti Telecom, Mobily, Orange, Singtel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia and Telin.
The latest development follows a series of recent cable landings aimed at improving Pakistan’s digital infrastructure. In February, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) successfully landed the Africa-1 submarine cable in Karachi. On the other hand, the internet capacity seemed down across the country in a while back.
Pakistan currently receives internet connectivity through six submarine cables with a combined capacity of 13 terabits per second. These include AAE-1, SMW-4 and IMEWE, operated by PTCL; SMW-5 and TWA-1, operated by Transworld Associates; and the PEACE cable, run by Cyber Internet Services.
