PM to inaugurate second submarine cable next week
By Asim Hussain

ISLAMABAD—Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is to inaugurate second undersea cable next week that will link Pakistan to rest of the world, officials said.
The inauguration of cable -- having capacity of transferring 1.28 trillion bytes -- will take place in Karachi as soon as the engineers working on the project completes job and give a green signal to PTCL headquarters.
“We have initiated trials and data is being transferred successfully and it’s now a matter of days,” said an official in the International Communication Wing of PTCL.
On Dec 11, PTCL Chief Junaid Khan had said second Internet undersea cable would start operation on Dec 18-19, but it could not be materialised in time due to some faults. The cable has already started transmitting 1.28 Terabytes per second data across three continents on Dec. 14 but as far as the Pakistan is concerned, some technical glitches had delayed it.
The second cable would end the dependency of Pakistan on a single cable which was deemed very risky after the June’s disruption that have halted the internet related business in country and incurred loss to the tune of millions of dollars.
“The new cable system will expected to provide enhanced reliability, better quality of service and seamless connectivity and bring down international leased line tariffs,” said an official involved in the venture.
In September 2002 PTCL had signed a memorandum of understanding with other international telecom carriers to jointly in work on the construction of the new undersea fibre cable. PTCL had agreed to bear five percent cost of the 500 million dollar project according to its requirements.