Multinet Pakistan, an Axiata company, and state-owned Omantel are deploying a new subsea cable system, dubbed Silk Route Gateway (SRG-1). It will have two pairs of fiber with a design capacity of 10 Tbps each. The system will be commercially launched by the end of 2017. The SRG-1 will stretch over one thousand kilometers between Muscat and Karachi, with a planned extension to link the newly built deep-sea port at Gwadar (Pakistan). That will make it the country’s first submarine cable with double landing stations.
Two weeks back we cautioned about India’s diminishing role as an unavoidable stopover in Eurasian telecoms connectivity. Now India’s Reliance has joined the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) consortium to build an 8,000 kilometer submarine cable system to link Singapore and Penang with Oman via India and Sri Lanka. It has planned to commence carrying commercial traffic by end of 2014. Other members of the consortium are: Telekom Malaysia, Vodafone, Omantel, Etisalat and Dialog Axiata. It is lot more than just another submarine cable.