Offering more than 100 Tbps of total capacity, SEA-ME-WE 6 will provide one of the lowest-latency routes
Cables are pictured inside a data centre in Paris, France on March 4, 2019. Photo: Reuters
A new South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 6 submarine cable system is being deployed at Karachi’s Hawkes Bay. The development is expected to expand Pakistan’s international bandwidth capacity and strengthen support for cloud services, data centres, fintech, e-commerce, streaming, and the broader digital economy.
According to the Ministry of Information Technology, the deployment of the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable, a 19,200-kilometre high-capacity fibre network will connect the country to destinations 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 ministry stated.
The consortium involved in the system 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.
The SEA-ME-WE 6 features additional fibre pairs and more than double the capacity of earlier SEA-ME-WE systems, improving resilience and diversification along high-traffic Asia–Europe routes through geo-diversified crossings and landing points in Egypt. The system enables rapid scalability, better fault protection, and reduced network ownership costs for participating service providers, while adding a critical new redundancy layer to the global internet backbone.
Under the deployment, Pakistan has been allocated a total of 13.2 Tbps, with 4 Tbps activated immediately—expanding the country’s bandwidth capacity and supporting key digital sectors including cloud services, data centres, fintech, e-commerce, and streaming.
Transworld Chairman Saad Muzaffar Warraich said the company is the first private-sector operator in Pakistan to deploy a submarine cable. He added that SEA-ME-WE 6 is the ninth cable to land in the country.
Warraich also said that companies such as Starlink are currently going through regulatory procedures, and efforts are underway to bring more international operators into Pakistan. While Transworld aims to enable Starlink’s launch as soon as possible, he mentioned.
Transworld has previously deployed three submarine cables in Pakistan—in 2005, 2015, and 2024. SEA-ME-WE 6 will be the company’s fourth system and is part of a consortium of 16 major global operators.
Officials say the SEA-ME-WE 6 system will significantly improve Pakistan’s internet capacity and enhance network speeds nationwide.
