gamer.pk

SeaMeWe-4 owned and run by Flag Telecom had been severely damaged near Egypt, where some of the company owners even termed it ‘cut’ at one point on Wednesday, has again been damaged to a critical level. Although this incident does not effect Pakistan directly, but in the near past there has been an incident of this sort where the entire Pakistani nation was left without the internet for a days, and it was this very cable.

SeaMeWe-3 is a submarine cable that connects Karachi, Pakistan to Middle East, Africa and Europe. A major bulk of our trade happens through Karachi and a major bulk of the internet traffic in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh is routed through this cable. This problem can cause a great amount of loss to the business community that were running on a reliable connection to Europe or USA. The situation in Dubai and the UAE in general is critical, and the services there are severely hampered.

In the light of all this, it is timely to state that Pakistan needs to invest a lot of money into satellite technology and develop a communications satellite system indigenously. The SeaMeWe is owned by consortium of companies to whom Pakistan pays a huge amount for it’s absurd bandwidth pricing. A satellite up link would at least ensure a plan B, a fall back plan without having to worry about the maintenance of this under water cable.

Major Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait already have a satellite system in place that helps them redirect their internet traffic when this cable starts to malfunction. As a rising regional economy, its time we put some thought to this.

(Image Source: South East Asia Middle East West Europe – 4)