KARACHI (NPTV/MoI): According to the Ministry of Information Pakistan has strengthened its global digital connectivity with the deployment of the (South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 6) SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable system, a 19,200-km high-capacity fibre network linking Pakistan to countries between Singapore and France.
Offering more than 100 Tbps of total capacity, SEA-ME-WE 6 will provide one of the lowest-latency routes between Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe.
The consortium includes Transworld Associates (Pakistan), Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel, Dhiraagu, Djibouti Telecom, Mobily, Orange, Singtel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia, and Telin.
SEA-ME-WE 6 features more fibre pairs and more than double the capacity of previous SEA-ME-WE systems, enhancing resilience and diversification across high-traffic Asia-Europe routes through trans-Egypt geo-diversified crossings and landing points.
The system enables rapid scalability, improved fault protection, and lower total network ownership costs for participating service providers, while adding an essential new redundancy layer to the global internet backbone.
Under this deployment, Pakistan has been allocated a total of 13.2 Tbps, with 4 Tbps being activated immediately—expanding the country’s international bandwidth capacity and enhancing support for cloud services, data centres, fintech, e-commerce, streaming, and the broader digital economy.
PS: The SEA-ME-WE 6 (South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 6, or SMW6) is a 21,700km submarine cable system between Singapore and France (Marseille), crossing Egypt through diverse terrestrial cables, with 17 landing points.
The SMW6 cable system consists of 10 fiber pairs, with 12.6Tbps per fiber pair and 126Tbps system capacity, using the latest SDM technology, cost approximately US$500million.
SMW6 consortium comprises 16 major subsea cable providers, including BEYON B.S.C (Batelco, Bahrain), Bangladesh Submarine Cables PLC (BSCCL, Bangladesh), Bharti Airtel Ltd. (India), China United Network Communications Group Company Limited (China Unicom), Dhivehi Raajjeyge Gulhun Public Limited Company (Dhiraagu Maldives), Djibouti Telecom, Microsoft (United States), Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Orange (France), PCCW Global, Singtel (Singapore), Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia, Telin (Indonesia), and Trans World Associates (Pakistan).
Among all the 16 parties of the SMW6 consortium, China Unicom, Microsoft and PCCW Global are non-landing parties. Batelco, part of the Beyon group, joined the SMW6 consortium later in May 2023, to invest in the SEA-ME-WE 6 Gulf Extension, the Al Khaleej Cable, which is fully owned by Batelco.
It’s reported that the budgetary costs on this project for BSCCL and SLT are approximately US$80million (Tk693 crore) and US$60million respectively. Airtel has acquired one Fiber Pair on the main SEA-ME-WE-6 system and will co-build four Fiber Pairs between Singapore – Chennai – Mumbai as part of the cable system. Airtel will land the SEA-ME-WE-6 cable system in India at new landing stations in Mumbai and Chennai.
Dhiraagu acquired in October 2022 a $20 million debt financing facility from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to expand mobile and internet coverage in Maldives, including a first $9.1 million facility as the first tranche to support Dhiraagu’s general capital expenditure and working capital requirements such as network capacity upgrades, expansion of data centers, and mobile service enhancements in and outside the capital Malé, and a second $10.9 million to finance further general capital expenditure and funding requirements for SMW6.
SMW6 consortium has awarded the supply contract to SubCom, expected to be ready for service in Q1 2025. SMW6 demonstrates the increasing geopolitical tensions on subsea cable industry between the US and China. Without the intervention by the US government, the Chinese supplier HMN Tech would have won the supply contract for the SMW6 project, through a fair bid and competition against SubCom, NEC and ASN.
In early 2020, HMN Tech was supposed to win the SMW6 cable project with the lowest bid of approximately $500 million and the convincing technical solutions and proposals. In order to oust HMN Tech from the SMW6 cable project and help SubCom to win the contract, the US government intervened in the international bidding project, proffered sweeteners – and warnings – to the certain SMW6 consortium members, with diplomatic and commercial measures. In February 2021, SubCom and HMN Tech were shortlisted and given a chance by the SMW6 consortium to submit a “best and final offer.”
SubCom lowered its bid to close to $600 million, while HMN Tech was now offering to build the SMW6 cable for $475 million. Finally, SubCom won and announced that the SMW6 consortium had awarded it the contract to build the SMW6 cable in February 2022. REUTERS had a special report to cover the story: U.S. and China wage war beneath the waves – over internet cables.
On April 27, 2024, SMW6 had its first landing in Marseille. SMW6 is expected to deliver a Round Trip Latency (RTD) of 130ms between Marseille and Singapore, with a cable length of approximately 11500 kilometers.
Newspakistan.tv/MoI/ SMW6
