Pakistan’s international internet capacity is set to expand following the deployment of the South-East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6) submarine cable system, a new high-capacity fibre network linking the country to destinations between Singapore and France, according to the Ministry of Information Technology.
The ministry said the 19,200-kilometre cable offers more than 100 terabits per second of total capacity and provides one of the lowest-latency routes connecting Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. It stated that Pakistan has been allocated 13.2 Tbps under the system, with 4 Tbps activated immediately to enhance the country’s international bandwidth.
Officials said the system includes additional fibre pairs and more than twice the capacity of earlier SEA-ME-WE networks. The cable’s design incorporates geo-diversified crossings and landing points in Egypt to improve resilience and maintain connectivity along high-traffic Asia–Europe routes. According to the ministry, the system allows for rapid scalability, improved fault protection, and reduced network ownership costs for participating operators, while adding a new redundancy layer to the global internet backbone.
The consortium operating SEA-ME-WE 6 includes Transworld Associates from Pakistan, along with Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel, Dhiraagu, Djibouti Telecom, Mobily, Orange, Singtel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia, and Telin. Transworld said the cable is the ninth to land in Pakistan and its fourth system deployment, following previous projects in 2005, 2015, and 2024.
The ministry stated that the capacity added through SEA-ME-WE 6 is expected to strengthen support for cloud services, data centres, fintech, e-commerce, streaming platforms, and other digital sectors. Officials also noted that the system will expand overall bandwidth availability and improve network performance nationwide.
The deployment at Karachi’s Hawkes Bay adds to Pakistan’s existing submarine cable infrastructure. Currently, six operational cables bring internet connectivity to the country, including AAE-1, SMW-4, IMEWE, SMW-5, TWA-1, and PEACE, operated by PTCL, Transworld Associates, and Cyber Internet Services. Earlier, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd landed the Africa-1 submarine cable in February, while Transworld Associates linked the Africa-2 cable to its Karachi station in December.
