On Wednesday, Dr. Umar Saif, the caretaker federal minister for information technology and telecommunication in Pakistan, stated that the country can reap financial benefits worth millions of dollars by utilizing its optical fiber cable network as a global corridor with lower latency.
China, Russia, and the Central Asian states will be connected to the rest of the world through a digital corridor planned by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication.
When speaking to a group of representatives from the PTA, SCO, PTCL, Transworld, and Peace Cable, Dr. Saif stated that the proposed project’s implementation would bring millions of dollars to Pakistan.
“As the CPEC trade corridor is a topic of much debate, Pakistan has an important opportunity to serve as a digital channel linking China, Russia, and the Central Asian states to the global economy. With an increasing number of underwater cables linking Africa and Europe, we can now provide low latency connectivity for China transit traffic along with having fiber access from Kashgar to Karachi. The minister went on, “Our digital corridor can cut the latency from 120 ms to just 20 ms.
He stated, “We are all set to take this forward. This is a huge opportunity for Pakistan.” With an optical fiber line that extends to Khunjerab, Karachi, and Gwadar, world traffic can be linked to the underwater cable.
Dr. Saif stated that all facilities and resources needed for the digital corridor have been supplied and that easy and reasonably priced digital access to the Middle East, Central Asia, China, and Europe will be available.
He added that the Special Investment Facilitation Council’s platform can be of enormous help in this endeavor and that a portion of the massive amount of digital traffic that occurs world can be channeled through this corridor.
According to Dr. Saif, there are currently 6,000 mobile towers connected to the country’s nearly 180 thousand kilometers of fiber cable.
He said that an effective plan has been developed to connect 20 thousand towers and lay 3 lac kilometers of optical fiber cable.
The minister stated they are in contact with international corporations like Google and Meta and that quicker and better internet services would be supplied to users through expanding the optical fiber line. The minister promised to provide positive news concerning global networks soon.
