KARACHI: The Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) Friday announced the commissioning of Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) cable system that connects South East Asia to Europe via Egypt. Spanning over 25,000 kms, it is the largest submarine cable to be constructed in almost 15 years. With a capacity of at least 40 Terabits per second across 5 fiber pairs, AAE-1 is designed from the outset with 100Gbps transmission technology, which may be upgraded in the future to fulfil increasing bandwidth demand. Salient features of AAE1 are Low Latency, no difference between Trunks or Branch and traffic between any two points is express. PTCL has been providing fixed line telephony services to the nation for the last 70 years and is also the country’s largest provider of Broadband services. Being Pakistan’s telecommunication backbone, PTCL is already a member of three (03) other international submarine cable consortiums; SMW-3, SMW-4 and IMEWE. PTCL’s huge investment in AAE-1 demonstrates its commitment to customers for providing a better quality of service via diverse and redundant routes, which no other operator in Pakistan can match. Further, PTCL will be able to cater for growing bandwidth requirements of its customers to support live streaming and watching HD content over internet, thus furthering its commitment of building a digitally connected Pakistan. Network diversity is a priority in network planning. It is critical to have more than one route; for continuity of services, for security and for efficiency of the network. PTCL has joined hands with world leading Telecom Operators including China Unicom, CIL (HyalRoute), Djibouti Telecom, Etisalat, GT5L, Mobily, Omantel, Ooredoo, OTEG, PCCW, Reliance Jio, Retelit, Telecom Egypt, TeleYemen, TOT, Viettel, VNPT and VTC to connect Pakistan to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, with Malaysia and Singapore, then onwards to Myanmar, India, in the East and Oman, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France. AAE-1’s completion will not only provide the primary route of choice but also offers protection and diversity to existing vulnerable and heavily congested routes. AAE-1 is an open access network connecting carrier neutral PoPs in Hong Kong, Singapore, and France where operators can choose their preferred backhaul providers in the PoPs or at the AAE-1 Cable Stations. It provides reliable connectivity to gateways in Gulf Countries (Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE) and South East Asia (Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand), to Africa (Djibouti) and critically diverse subsea connectivity to emerging markets in Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam and Yemen. Published in Daily Times, July 8th , 2017.