Business

Fibre optic cable: Internet to speed up

Third submarine cable linking country to Europe launched commercially.

Omair Zeeshan December 11, 2010

KARACHI: A state-of-the-art fibre optic submarine cable to Europe with en route landings in Pakistan has been completed and was commercially launched on Saturday. The cable – laid by a consortium of nine leading global telecom operators, including Etisalat and Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) – is a major development aimed at meeting the growing bandwidth requirements of the region.

With the cable being commissioned at a landing station in Karachi, PTCL subscribers – corporate clients included – can expect faster and more stable internet speeds, said the company’s spokesperson.

PTCL CEO Walid Irshad, explaining the nation’s growing internet requirements, said that the country was witnessing phenomenal growth in bandwidth requirement. He expected requirements to substantially increase further, demanding ever higher speed, availability and quality.

Meanwhile, industry sources maintain that the move will not have any effect on the speed or latency of internet connections offered by PTCL, because the company has until now been unable to utilise the full bandwidth on existing cables.

They did, however, agree that this would give users more choice and would allow Pakistan to move in the direction of further diversified internet services, including bandwidth hogs like internet television – similar to Netflix in the US.

A decrease in the prices of internet connections remains a possibility as the new cable should allow PTCL to divert existing customers to different servers.

Etisalat also has a large stake in PTCL, pointed out industry observers, who were hopeful that the slow internet speeds and the latency issues that plague the country’s online realm would diminish. “This could mean that I will be able to stream multiple YouTube videos without them stuttering,” said one internet user.

The cable, which stretches from India to Europe, is named the IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) and has a design capacity of 3.84 terabits per second. It is also the most advanced cable connecting India in South Asia to Italy and France in Western Europe via the Middle East with en route landings in Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon.

The 13,000-kilometre long three-pair fibre optic is the third major underwater cable operational between India and Europe after the SMW3 (South-East Asia-Middle East -Western Europe 3) and SMW4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4).

The IMEWE consortium comprises nine major telecom companies: Bharti Airtel (India), Etisalat (UAE), France Telecom-Orange (France), OGERO (Lebanon), Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (Pakistan), Saudi Telecom Company STC (Saudi Arabia), Telecom Egypt (Egypt), Telecom Italia Sparkle (Italy), and Tata Communications (India).

Published in The The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2010.

COMMENTS (1)

Haroon Rashid | 13 years ago | Reply Thanks to the author to publish the story, as the most important news for Pakistan ICT sector. Now this is the turn of the regulation to enforcement as per directives ITU, and the ITU regulatory affairs. Access to internet, quality of network, tariffs. 3G licenses should immediately be awarded and the television channel be digitalised by the respective regulator, per ITU directives. This will have tremendous frequency spectrum available for wireless broadband operators and 3G operators. What is delaying that. Saudi Telecom., one of the under sea cable operator should be given license for LDI in order to utilise the landing point access to internet access in Pakistan and usage of VOIP to eliminate the misue of grey trafficking in Pakistan for illegal inbound traffic. Why VOIP is not de-regulated. Today when 4G networks are launched in Norway by Huawei Technologies what is stopping the regulator to license 4G in Pakistan. Let more companies come to Pakistan and compete, particularly our regional partners.

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