SRG1: Pakistan to Get a New Submarine Cable With Capacity of 20Tbps

Multinet Pakistan, a voice and data company, and Omantel of Oman yesterday announced the initiation of a new submarine cable network “Silk Route Gateway 1” to connect Karachi with Barka (near Muscat in Oman) with a strategic landing point at Gawadar in future.

SRG1 is going to be 900 kilometer long submarine cable with two fiber pairs system design with capacity of 10Tbps of communication per fiber pair.

Future extension of SRG1 includes a branching unit through Gawadar to connect the next economic hub of Asia with a direct international link.

Current consortium members for SRG1 are Multinet and Omantel and they are already in talks to accept another one or at most two members to be part of SRG1.

Multinet said that SRG1 will be completed and operational in 18 months from today at a cost of USD 24 million.

For the purpose SRG1 consortium yesterday signed Xtera as turnkey vendor for the establishment and maintenance of submarine cable.

Upon completion, Pakistan will immediately get 200Gbps of additional bandwidth, however, this capacity could be upped to 20Tbps with time, mainly based on market demand.

With Multinet as part of SRG1, the duopoly of PTCL and TW1 in space of international bandwidth will end.

Market sources suggest that Multinet’s entrance in market is going to reduce internet bandwidth prices for Pakistani ISPs and telcos by at least 60%. Sources said that current bandwidth rate of USD 3,000 per STM1 are expected to hit USD 1,200 per STM1 till end of 2017.

Pakistan’s current international links and bandwidth capacity include:

  1. TW1 with design capacity of 1.28Tbps
  2. Sea-Me-We-3 with 480 Gbps with two fibre pairs
  3. Sea-Me-We-4 with design capacity of 1.28Tbps
  4. I-ME-WE with Design Capacity of 3.86Tbps

Following international links with landing points in Pakistan are under construction:

Also Read: Pakistan to Get $44 Million Fiber Optic Back Haul to Link with China

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • Well PTCL monopoly will end coz they are making fools of us for a long long time.

    • and to accept the reality, we in Pakistan are getting one of the cheapest internet as compared to our region specially gulf where quality is based upon high prices and now the quality of ptcl has been improved in terms of Evdo Wingle and Charji which have now become economical as well as speedy too… i admit that there are flaws in their services and I also have go annoyed over them but at the end, there is no economical alternative to ptcl in broadband, i tested 3g and it took only few months to reach up to their maximum capacity and now there are only costly packages of Zong with high speed, else there is nothing as compared to ptcl wingle/ charJi…

    • doesn’t matter, every business starts in this way. they wouldn’t be offering us a DSL (lol) instead they would become an alternative to ISP’s getting bandwidth from PTCL or TW1 and it would lead to market competition and ultimate result would be beneficial to us….

    • This is about international bandwidth not local bandwidth. Everything we do online requires us to access servers in the west and so we all use international bandwidth but only two companies control that. They are PTCL and TWA. The reason for high bandwidth prices in Pakistan is the duopoly of PTCL and TWA who have formed a cartel.

      Multinet won’t sell directly to end users. They will sell to other ISPs reducing the wholesale cost of bandwidth. This will eventually filter down to end user prices.

  • Is it just my illusion? Or is this week really loaded with good news?
    First ,audi decided to enter pk
    Then, nissan came back
    Then, bosch decided to come
    Then, e-tickets for railway were launched
    And now, another new submarine cable for more bandwidth

  • @aamir7
    What is the status of the AAE-1 cable which was due to be completed this year?

  • Well good news are coming each day, Thanks to Our Gen: for bringing peace, Now what about D2H direct to home tv. Why it’s not launching. Want to get rid of the present cable tv system having poor services. No picture whenever cable got wet with singal drop of rain or it shakes with a small air wave.

  • good point. but why did you not see such news in previous govt. era…?

  • what is the benefit when daily internet price increase like ufone mega internet bucket increase from 10 rps to 99 rups with only 1 gb 1 am to 6 am complete suck country


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