ISLAMABAD, March 28: The Pakistan Telecommunications Company has signed an agreement with a consortium of 16 international telecom companies for the construction and maintenance of the new submarine cable system at Dubai.

The contract was awarded jointly to a French and a Japanese firm. Muhammad Sarwar, senior executive vice-president (technical), signed the agreement on behalf of the PTCL.

The agreement would facilitate the Internet connectivity by ensuring network redundancy. The base of Internet customers is also likely to be increased manifold.

The system spans some 20,000km across the world, landing in more than 10 countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, and France.

This cable system is the fourth in the series of Sea-Me-We cable system and its construction is expected to be completed over a period of 16 months. The cable system will be a timely response to bandwidth demands as previous cable systems approach their maximum design capacity.

The system is built at a very competitive cost. "This should translate into very favourable situations which both the consumers and corporate market will highly welcome," said Mr Sarwar, after signing the agreement.