PEACE Cable: Pakistan's Tenth High Bandwidth Submarine Cable Ready to Go Live

Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) cable, a  96 TBPS (terabits per second), 15,000 km long submarine cable, is now ready for service. This brings to 10 the total number of submarine cables currently connecting or planned to connect Pakistan with the world: TransWorld1, Africa1 (2023), 2Africa (2023), AAE1, PEACE,  SeaMeWe3, SeaMeWe4, SeaMeWe5, SeaMeWe6 (2025) and IMEWE. PEACE cable has two landing stations in Pakistan: Karachi and Gwadar. SeaMeWe stands for Southeast Asia Middle East Western Europe, while IMEWE is India Middle East Western Europe and AAE1 Asia Africa Europe 1. 

PEACE Cable. Source: Cybernet

PEACE is a privately owned submarine cable that originates in Karachi, Pakistan and runs underwater all the way to Marseilles, France via multiple points in the continent of Africa.  It is being built as part of the Digital Silk Road sponsored by China. Cybernet is the local landing and global connectivity partner of PEACE Cable System in Pakistan. It is designed to enable high-speed access to a variety of content, cloud computing, gaming and video streaming platforms.  

Map of Submarine Cable Connections to Karachi, Pakistan. Source: TeleGeography

The PEACE Pakistan-Egypt segment connects Karachi, Pakistan and Zafarana, Egypt, spanning a total length of 5,800 km. The landings of Karachi and Zafarana were completed in March and December 2021 respectively, according to a press release of PEACE Cable International Network Co., Ltd. In addition, the Mediterranean segment of PEACE linking Marseille, France, to Abu Talat, Egypt, a 3,200km long project, has also achieved RFS in March 2022. Therefore, the route from Pakistan to France of the PEACE cable system is now fully constructed and ready for use.

Telecom Services Subscriptions in Pakistan as of June, 2022. Source: PTA

Number of broadband subscribers and demand for data has seen rapid double digit growth in Pakistan over the last several years. Number of broadband subscriptions has grown to 119 million, representing 53.92% of population. Per user data consumption has nearly tripled from 2.1 gigabytes per month in 2017-18 to 6.1 gigabytes per month in 2020-21. As of June 2022, it exceeds 7 GB per subscriber per month. Telecom service providers are responding to it by increasing the capacity of the Internet by laying more and higher bandwidth fiber cables and adding faster speed equipment. Ookla’s data reveals that the median mobile internet connection speed in Pakistan increased by 3.43 Mbps (+26.5%) in the twelve months to the start of 2022.

Per User Data Demand Growth. Source: Pakistan Telecom Authority 

Pakistan Per Subscriber Per Month Data Use

Worldwide Mobile Data Use Per Subscriber Per Month. Source: Statista

Cybernet, the landing partner of PEACE in Pakistan, claims it has built the country’s state-of-the-art, Cable Landing Station in Karachi, which will allow global carriers, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), content providers and virtually all IT-enabled firms to tap into the submarine cable capacity at easily accessible interconnect points across Pakistan. 

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Pakistan Mobile Broadband Speed Fastest in South Asia

Pakistan's average mobile broadband speed of 13.1 megabits per second is the fastest in South Asia, according to Ookla Global Speed Test Index 2017.  Mobile broadband speeds in other South Asian countries are: Myanmar 11.7, Nepal 11, Sri Lanka 9.3, India 8.8 and Bangladesh 4.97.

World Speed Rankings:

South Asia region remains far behind the rest of the world. Pakistan ranks 89, Myanmar 94, Nepal 99, Sri Lanka 107, India 109 and Bangladesh 120 among 122 nations ranked by Ookla.  Norway tops the list with 62.66 Mbps followed by the Netherlands 53, Iceland 52.78, Singapore 51.5 and Malta 50.46 Mbps.  United States is ranked 44 with 26.32 Mbps.

Smartphones/broadband Growth:

The growth of mobile broadband has spurred demand for smartphones. Pakistan now has nearly 50 million mobile broadband subscriptions with as many smartphones. Both smartphones and broadband user base in Pakistan are surging at a rate of 1 to 2 million a month.

Next Billion Users:

Google believes the next billion smartphones will be sold in 4 countries including Pakistan. The other three countries driving demand are India, Indonesia and Brazil.

At a recent launch of Datally app in Pakistan,  Google's head of Next Billion User initiative Tania Aidrus told Express Tribune that “Google is working on digitalising Urdu to promote local content and bring the vast majority of non-English-speaking Pakistanis online."

At the launch event, Google’s Asia Pacific Industry Head Khurram Jamali said that the number of people watching videos on the internet is growing by 66% annually while social media users are increasing by 35% per year, adding that 80% of the users surf the internet through mobile phones, according to Express Tribune.

Summary:

Pakistan mobile broadband  speeds are the fastest in South Asia region and the number of users in the country are growing rapidly. There are nearly 50 million broadband/smartphone users now and rising at a rate of 1 to 2 million per month. Google has put Pakistan among 4 countries where the Next Billion smartphone users are expected to come from.

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