Pakistan: Internet gets a revamp

A new state-of-the-art fiber optic submarine cable that reaches Europe with en route landings in Pakistan has been commercially launched to meet the increased bandwidth requirements in the region

The new cable, labeled as IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) has been laid and installed from India-to-Europe; it has en route landings in Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon.

It possesses a design capacity of 3.84 terabits per second and it is the most advanced technological and efficient cable that provides connectivity in the region.

The cable was laid by a consortium of nine top global telecom operators, which include Etisalat and Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). It is likely to provide a boost to Internet connectivity and development of telecom sector in Pakistan, as PTCL still remains the biggest player in the telecom and Internet services sector of the country.

The cable has been commissioned at a landing station in Karachi, which would particularly benefit PTCL subscribers in terms of faster and stable Internet speeds. However, industry experts believe that PTCL subscribers are not likely to gain much benefit as the company has yet to utilize the full bandwidth on existing cables, let alone the newer developed ones.

Nonetheless, the cable is likely to give consumers more freedom to choose and attract more players to the sector, as well as usher a new era of diversified Internet services in the country, such as Internet television, similar to Netflix in the US.

These newly introduced opportunities of diversified services require a much larger bandwidth and have been until recently only a dream in the country.

After its installation and development, PTCL may also find it beneficial to divert the existing customers to different servers, resulting in a decrease of connectivity prices, making Internet connectivity affordable for a wider audience in the region.