KARACHI (Web Desk) – Pakistan’s international internet capacity has received a major boost with the activation of the South-East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE) 6 submarine cable system, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced on Saturday.
The new 19,200-kilometre high-capacity fibre-optic cable now links Pakistan to major global digital hubs between Singapore and France, significantly enhancing speed, bandwidth and digital resilience.
The SEA-ME-WE 6 system offers over 100 terabits per second (Tbps) of total capacity, delivering one of the lowest-latency data routes between Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe. Under the deployment, Pakistan has been allocated 13.2 Tbps in total, of which 4 Tbps has already been activated – a major enhancement that will reinforce cloud computing, streaming services, fintech, data centres, e-commerce and the broader digital economy.
Africa1 اور 2Africa کے بعدپاکستان کی پچھلے ایک سال میں تیسری (اور کل نویں)سب مرین کیبل SeMeWe6 آج دوپہر 12 بجے پاکستانی ساحل تک پہنچ گئی یہ کیبل 21,000km ہے،فرانس سےسنگاپور تک جاتی ہے اور پاکستان کی موجودہ کھپت میں40٪اضافی صلاحیت شامل کرے گی#transworld #DigitalNationPakistan pic.twitter.com/2RDimkuLkE
— Shaza Fatima Khawaja (@ShazaFK) November 22, 2025The new cable system features more fibre pairs and more than double the capacity of earlier SEA-ME-WE networks, making it a key upgrade for high-traffic Asia-Europe connectivity. It also introduces geo-diversified routes across Egypt, improving fault protection and network resilience. Officials say the enhanced route diversity ensures robust protection against potential disruptions, while enabling rapid scalability and lowering operational costs for participating service providers.
The ministry stated that the deployment adds a critical new redundancy layer to the global internet backbone and significantly strengthens Pakistan’s digital infrastructure. The project is managed by an international consortium including Transworld Associates from Pakistan, alongside Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel, Dhiraagu, Djibouti Telecom, Mobily, Orange, Singtel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia and Telin.
In recent developments, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd successfully landed the Africa-1 submarine cable at Karachi in February 2025, while Transworld Associates connected the Africa-2 cable to its Karachi station in December. These projects continue to improve digital connectivity and reinforce network reliability.
At present, six submarine cables with a total capacity of 13 Tbps provide internet connectivity to Pakistan. These include Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1), South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SMW4) and India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE), operated by PTCL; South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 5 (SMW-5) and Transworld Associates 1 (TWA-1), managed by Transworld Associates; and the Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) system operated by Cyber Internet Services.