Pakistan and China are strongly pursuing fiber-optic cable from the Chinese border to Rawalpindi. Pakistan Telecomunication Authority is yet to be taken on board.
This fiber optic cable being laid between Pakistan and China worths $44 million and it will become another high speed international connection to cater to the rapidly growing internet traffic needs of Pakistan.
When completed, this back-haul fiber optic cable will provide Pakistan with a direct telecom access to China, Central Asian States and from there to Europe and to and from the United States.
Once this project is completed Pakistan will have direct access to China, and Europe through there and United States.
The optic fiber will be laid between Rawalpindi and Kunjrab, it will cover distant of 820Km.
High-ups at PTA revealed that Authority is yet to be approached about the project; however, it is ready to cooperate whenever there’s a need.
These situations were also confirmed by Chairman PTA Syed Ismail Shah on Thursday in a meeting of a parliamentary panel. “We have not been officially informed about the Fibre optic project under the CPEC”, said Shah.
Secretary Ministry of Information Technology, Mr. Azmat Ali Ranjha said that the task of the project has been given to Special Communications Organization (SCO). He said that PC-1 worth Rs 1.4 billion has been sent to the Planning Commission in this regard.
Pakistan is currently connected with the world through four undersea fiber optic cables, while another four are being built and will be operational in the next couple of years.
Pakistan’s current international links and bandwidth capacity include:
- TW1 with design capacity of 1.28Tbps
- Sea-Me-We-3 with 480 Gbps with two fibre pairs
- Sea-Me-We-4 with design capacity of 1.28Tbps
- I-ME-WE with Design Capacity of 3.86Tbps
Following international links with landing points in Pakistan are under construction:
- AAE-1 with design capacity of 40Tbps
- Sea-Me-We-5 with design capacity of 24Tbps
- Silk Road Gateway-1 (With landing points in Karachi and Gwadar)
- Pakistan-China Fiber Optic Back-Haul
The Exim bank China has agreed to provide the government a concessional loan at an interest rate of 2 % per annum for Cross Boarder Optic Fiber Project.
Pakistan will greatly benefit in terms of enhanced security and revenue from the state of the art optic fiber project between Pakistan and China, which will be undertaken by Huawei.
