Pakistan has reached another major milestone in its digital expansion with the onboarding of the SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable, its third international cable system in a year. Federal IT and Telecom Minister Shaza Fatima confirmed the development on LinkedIn, calling it a significant step toward strengthening global connectivity and increasing national internet capacity.
The new system follows the recent arrivals of the Africa-1 and 2Africa cables, marking one of the fastest periods of growth in Pakistan’s subsea infrastructure. Transworld Associates (TWA), the landing partner for SEA-ME-WE 6, will initially add 4 terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity, expanding Pakistan’s current 13.2 Tbps bandwidth by about 40 percent.
Stretching 21,700 kilometres, SEA-ME-WE 6 connects Pakistan to countries between Singapore and France. It is one of the most advanced high-capacity networks in the world, with a minimum design capacity of 132 Tbps across 10 fiber pairs. This system is built to support large-scale data flows needed for Pakistan’s digital economy, international business, and cloud-based platforms.
Alongside this subsea investment, TWA is building a Tier III certified data centre in Karachi. The facility will connect directly to major subsea systems, including SMW-6, SMW-5, TW1, and 2Africa. It will also be Pakistan’s first data centre designed to support high-density racks for AI workloads, offering scalable and secure hosting for critical national and international operations.
The data centre is scheduled to open in January 2026. It will serve businesses both inside and outside Pakistan, strengthening cloud infrastructure, enterprise networks, and content delivery services. Its Tier III certification ensures redundancy, high availability, and fault tolerance, positioning it as a key part of Pakistan’s growing digital and AI-focused ecosystem.