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Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) and China Telecom Global (CTG) have signed an agreement for the establishment of an optical fiber network in the underserved areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan.
PTCL is the leading telecommunication company in Pakistan which provides ICT services nationwide. Under the agreement, a new optical fiber cable (OFC) link will be deployed that will connect China via Gilgit to Rawalpindi and Peshawar from where it would be connected to the PTCL national OFC backbone.
Sikandar Naqi, Chief Business Development Officer, PTCL said, “This is an important milestone in our digital connectivity links. Our ongoing collaboration represents a strategic development which will create a number of business opportunities of mutual interest including IP bandwidth, capacity on Submarine Cables and establishment of optical fiber cable (OFC) links.”
PTCL’s optical fiber network currently extends till Chitral and Kohistan Districts of KPK. PTCL plans to extend the network to Gilgit through two different routes that will connect Gilgit to Rawalpindi and Peshawar from where it would be connected to the PTCL national OFC backbone.
This partnership will enable China to extend connectivity to neighboring countries through PTCL’s terrestrial OFC link and major European destinations through PTCL’s established submarine cables infrastructure including SEA-ME-WE-3, SEA-ME-WE-4, IMEWE and AAE-1 which offer extremely low latency compared to the existing solutions.
The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Sikandar Naqi, Chief Business Development Officer, PTCL and Donald Tan, Executive Vice President Network Operations, China Telecom Global at a ceremony held recently at China Telecom Global Headquarters in Hong Kong.
