ISLAMABAD, Dec 1: Pakistan and Iran on Thursday decided to establish a working group to address any operational problems ahead of building an optic fibre link between the two countries within the next one year. The two countries have also decided to exchange expertise in the area of telecom training for which officials from both countries would exchange visits to view the status of training facilities and find ways to further coordinate and cooperate.

The decision was taken during a meeting between Minister for Information Technology, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari and Iran’s Deputy Communication Minister, Kamal Mohamedpour who met the minister to brief him on the arrangements made by Iran to link up with Pakistan through an optic fibre to be laid via Gawadar.

IT Secretary Farrakh Qayyum, member telecom, Nooruddin Baqai and advisor to IT Minister, Dr Aamir Matin were also present.

The countries also decided to have several rounds of talks in the next few days to overcome any hurdles and build a consensus on the proposed optic fibre link route.

The Iranian delegation was in Islamabad to attend the 10th session of the General Assembly of Asia Pacific Tele-community.

Mr Laghari told the Iranian minister that Pakistan was already in the process of augmenting its existing international connectivity through fibre optic cables as SEA-ME-WE-3 was so far the only optical fibre cable connecting Pakistan to the external world.

He said that SEA-ME-WE-3 was Pakistan’s sole point of international communication, vulnerable to both natural causes and clandestine activity.

He said the PTCL was the only provider of national optical fibre backbone network in the country and there was a need to have back-up arrangements to meet the redundancy, diversity and resilience needs.

He said that work on three domestic alternative backbones had already started and all the three domestic backbone networks were coming from private sector initiatives, involving 15000 km fibre and investment of about $400 million in nearly 18 months.

The minister also briefed the Iranian deputy minister on the telecom training facilities being offered at the PTCL institute.

During the meeting the two sides also decided to share their experiences in this regard through exchange of expertise and technical resources.