Caretaker Federal Minister for Information Technology (IT) & Telecommunication Dr. Umar Saif on Monday announced that Pakistan has entered into a strategic agreement with China to route its internet traffic through the country, positioning itself as a regional hub for connectivity.
Dr. Umar Saif, made the announcement during the inauguration of the ‘Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE) powered by DE-CIX,’ the first carrier-neutral Internet Exchange (IX) in the country.
“We have reached an agreement for China to start routing their Internet traffic through Pakistan making Pakistan a regional hub for connectivity,” said Dr Umar Saif.
The collaboration, marked by four significant milestones achieved in partnership with PTCL, SCO, PTA, DE-CIX, PEACE Cable, and China Mobile, is expected to bring substantial revenue to Pakistan through internet transit traffic. Dr. Umar Saif highlighted that this move will not only strengthen internet connectivity but also open up opportunities for localized content hosting from major platforms like YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok.
According to interim IT & Telecom Minister, this will earn Pakistan huge revenue for Internet transit traffic. Secondly, Etisalat has setup Pakistan’s first carrier neutral IXP and Data center in Pakistan to strengthen the reliability of internet connectivity. Thirdly PTCL will work with DE CIX German data center and IXP operator to run the operations of this new data center.
Bringing a world-class data center operator to Pakistan will now enable us to both bring super-scaling cloud services such as AWS, Google Cloud and Azure to Pakistan and provide a local content hub for content services such as YouTube, TikTok and Netflix. And last but not the least, Pakistan’s internet users can now access services locally and Pakistan can become a hub of regional connectivity.
Describing the revolutionary steps, Dr. Umar Saif, further said, “Pakistan is a massive digital market, with an internet user-base larger than the population of Italy”. He said over the past few years, we have made significant strides in advancing fiber connectivity. We got two fiber loops from Kashgar to Rawalpindi, further extended to Karachi by PTCL.
Additionally, multiple submarine cables making landfall in Karachi further enhance our connectivity. Now, PTCL Business Solution’s carrier neutral data center, managed by a tier 1 data center operator, DE-CIX is up and running and generates exciting prospects for localized content hosting from leading platforms like YouTube, Netflix and TikTok. The content cached and routed from Pakistan can seamlessly reach other markets, positioning us as the regional digital connectivity hub. It can generate annual revenues, ranging from $200-400 million through transit traffic to substantially add to our economy.
It is worth mentioning here that Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), is the largest integrated Information Communication Technology (ICT) company of Pakistan and DE-CIX, is the world’s leading Internet Exchange (IX) operator.
