Mobilink’s fibre optic project to be completed by year end

By Romail Kenneth

KARACHI: Mobilink fiber optic project is expected to be completed by the second half of the current calendar year. Presently it is 6,500 kilometer long. The third phase of expansion for another 2000 km is currently underway, which will provide a third redundant link. The current deployment already has two redundant links, Mobilink official spokesperson told Daily Times here Friday.

He said Mobilink has a state of the art fibre optic network starting from Peshawar to Karachi covering all major cities. “Our fiber optic network would be one of the best in Pakistan and after the completion of this phase we will be the only service provider to have three levels of protection.”

The Mobilink spokesperson said: “We have introduced latest technology, which automatically shifts traffic to the redundant link in case a link goes down.” This all happens in milliseconds and there is no performance degradation of the voice or data traffic. With a capable technical team available 24 hours our response times for restoration and resolving any possible issues are minimal, he added.

“We have plans to provide high-speed data connectivity in the urban and rural sectors of Pakistan through WiMax services.” Being a developing country, the expansion of broadband networks and services is of high importance to the Pakistani economy, he said adding that broadband connections in the country currently stood at around 0.1 million. With the population figure at over 165 million, this will clearly place Pakistan’s economic development into the next stages of progress.

After the completion of fiber optic the company has a plan to divert its traffic on its own fiber optic and would also offer it to the other operators to use it for their traffic. “Currently our network is based on 2.5 generation and we will upgrade this according to the requirement of our subscribers,” he added.

At present, the company is leading among all the existing mobile operators with more than 30 million customers enjoying its services across the nation. With more than 5,000 cities, towns, and villages throughout Pakistan on our network of services. Mobilink has so far invested $2.5 billion in infrastructure and in 2008 the company is planning to invest $500 million to meet the demands of industry and needs of its subscribers.