Huawei Marine and Tropical Science had Commenced the construction of the PEACE Submarine fiber optic cable that will provide connectivity between Pakistan and East African coastal countries. The PEACE Undersea fiber cable will serve as a communication link for China to access the African countries through Pakistan. China is building the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor for the benefit of Chinese traders to access Africa. Pakistan gives its land for the Chinese government.
Linking East Africa through Pakistan is one of the most cost-effective ways for Chinese companies to reduce the transportation cost of the export from China to Africa. It also reduces the delivery time so that Chinese companies can get an edge over their competitors. The benefit for Pakistan is getting its people engaged in construction work for the road and communication infrastructure. Pakistan has been eagerly looking for Chinese investments to engage its unemployed youth, which otherwise would fall prey to the anti-social elements that are spreading in their society.
On November 6, Huawei Marine announced that it had started its survey work and desk study to build a submarine fiber optic cable system called PEACE (Pakistan East Africa Cable Express). Huawei in collaboration with one of the key investors Tropic Science Co.Ltd will survey the cable route from Pakistan’s southern coast to the East African region. With initial work underway, the project is targeted for completion in Q4, 2019.
The project has a total length of 13,000km and will connect Pakistan and East African countries such as Djibouti and Kenya, with a northern expansion to Egypt and further southern expansion from Kenya to South Africa. The project will facilitate connectivity from China to Pakistan via existing terrestrial cable networks and create the shortest route from China to Europe via Africa. This network topology substantially reduces existing network lengths by up to 50% and when completed, will provide a cost-effective, diverse route for the escalating demand for capacity between Asia, Africa, and Europe.
African market capacity is more attractive than many other regions as its networks are developing rapidly and the number of internet users in Africa is also growing at an unprecedented rate. The construction of this international information highway will become an important enabler of East Africa’s telecommunications as well as its social and economic development in the future.
In October 2017, at the 3rd Asia Pacific Submarine Networks Forum, Tropic Science, China-ASEAN Information Harbor, China Construction Bank, and Huawei Marine signed an MOU for the construction of the PEACE submarine cable project.
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