Pakistan's fixed-line incumbent PTCL has announced plans to help fund a new subsea cable system linking the Far East to Europe.
The company will join a consortium which will commission the cable. Other members of the consortium have yet to be named.
The system will have multiple landing points in the Middle East. PTCL said the new cable system will add terabits of international capacity and build redundancy into the company's existing international infrastructure.
Terms are still being finalized, but the company expects to sign an agreement with the consortium by the end of the year, and to have the cable operational by as early as Q4 2015.
This marks PTCL's fourth investment in a submarine cable system, following the SMW3, SMW4 and IMEWE cables.
In other regional subsea cable news, Huawei subsidiary Huawei Marine Networks announced it has commenced operation of a new $9 million undersea repeater and branching unit manufacturing plant in Dongguan, China.
Huawei Marine said it is scaling the factory up to full capacity in preparation for the start of a new West African cable project.