PTCL commissions new submarine cable system AAE-1

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the country’s leading broadband service provider, on Friday announced to link the world’s biggest submarine cable consortium Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) in order to provide an alternative route to its customers and ramp up data carrying capacity.  

AAE-1, spanning over 25,000 kilometres, connects South East Asia to Europe via Egypt. The cable system will be constructed within the next 15 years.

PTCL is already a member of three other international submarine cable consortiums: South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe (SMW-3) and SMW-4 and India-Middle East-Western Europe. The company has been providing fixed line telephony services across the country for the last 70 years.

“AAE-1’s completion will not only provide the primary route of choice but also offer protection and diversity to existing vulnerable and heavily congested routes,” the company said in a statement. 

AAE-1 provides connectivity to gateways in Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Djibouti and subsea connectivity to Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam and Yemen.

The company said the new connection will be able to cater for growing bandwidth requirement of its customers to support live streaming and watching high definition content over internet, helping in building a digitally-connected Pakistan. 

“Network diversity is a priority in network planning,” it added. “It is critical to have more than one route for continuity of services for security and for efficiency of the network.” The system has a capacity of at least 40 terabits per second across five fiber pairs. It is designed from the outset with 100 gigabits per second transmission technology, which may be upgraded in future to fulfill increasing bandwidth demand. 

PTCL has already partnered with world leading telecom operators, including China Unicom, CIL (HyalRoute), Djibouti Telecom, Etisalat, GT5L, Mobily, Omantel, Ooredoo, OTEG, PCCW, Reliance Jio, Retelit, Telecom Egypt, TeleYemen, TOT, Viettel, VNPT and VTC to connect Pakistan to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, with Malaysia and Singapore, then onwards to Myanmar, India, in the East and  Oman, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France.