Pakistan’s Bandwidth Capacity Increases 4X with New 24Tbps Undersea Cable

SEA-ME-WE-5 today announced the completion of its 20,000 km long under-sea submarine cable that also connects to Pakistan through a TWA landing station in Karachi.

SEA-ME-WE-5 will be managed and maintained by TWA in Pakistan, which is part of the consortium along with other leading telecom operators from 16 countries.

With this, 24Tbps of additional internet bandwidth is made available to Pakistan.

SEA-ME-WE-5 is a 20,000Km long cable system that connects Singapore to Europe (Italy and France) and traverses Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Yemen, Djibouti and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Not to mention, end users should not expect immediate increase in speeds. Instead, internet operators (telecom and ISPs) will now have the opportunity to buy wider pipes of internet bandwidth that will ultimately benefit end-users.

Just in case if you are wondering, Pakistan’s total internet capacity before today was less than 7 Tbps. With with SEA-ME-WE-5 going live, Pakistan’s new internet bandwidth capacity now hovers around 31 Tbps.

Pakistan’s international links and bandwidth capacity include:

  • TW1 with design capacity of 1.28Tbps
  • Sea-Me-We-3 with 480 Gbps capacity with two fiber pairs
  • Sea-Me-We-4 with design capacity of 1.28Tbps
  • I-ME-WE with design capacity of 3.86Tbps
  • Sea-Me-We-5 with design capacity of 24Tbps

Soon to be Completed:

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

  • AAE-1 with design capacity of 40 Tbps
  • Silk Road Gateway-1 (With landing points in Karachi and Gwadar)

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • how soon would the increase in capacity be seen either by better internet packages, speeds or any thing like that ?
    (i might not have phrased is correctly but you guys get the idea)

  • Will this result in cheaper PTCL packages? Better ping?
    I think PTCL should sell 8mb internet for 2000 instead of 3000 after this and I will be a happy man :D

    • ptcl aapna sara network fiber per too kr ly pahlay then aap in cheezon ka PTCL ki service me soochna. copper per asa mumkin nhi :P

    • This cable is not related to PTCL. So PTCL’s capacity will only increase if they buy bandwidth from Transworld (which is unlikely)

    • Its managed by Transworld not PTCL. Pings will not be affected as they are more or less dependent on the physical distance between two points, overheads are minimal.

  • Don’t know is it because of this new submarine but i am getting 50-60 mbs on zong 4g from last 15 days earlier i was getting 30 mbs.

  • is 24tbps available to pk exclusively? i believe no. its the total capacity of the cable which is shared by many countries. Internet prices are already low in pk. I doubt any further reduction.
    PK has two international cable operators. TWA and PTCL. PTCL will not benefit from the new cable from TWA. However, Zong and Mobilink will.

    • FYI international cable operators P.I.E and TW1 , PTCL bechara bhikaari hy :P PIE SE service lata hy

  • Speed is not everything, if this promises better latency to EU/US then sure will be a hit cause next gen requirement is online games, daas .. etc.

  • That is very encouraging news, BUT if there is no electricity then how this 31Tbps of internet will work? It like you have Ferrari but you dont have road to drive :). So who will solve that problem?

  • THE ONLY BEST WAY OF SPEEDING UP THE INTERNET IS BY USING GOOGLE DNS IT IS VERY SIMPLE AND EASY METHOD. CHECKOUT


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