600pc increase in Internet bandwidth
ISLAMABAD- Minister for Science and Technology, Prof Attaur-Rahman said that with the inauguration of STM-I link to US, the country’s bandwidth had been increased by 600 per cent.
He was addressing the inauguration of Synchrous Transmission Mode (STM)-I link at Pakistan Telecommunications headquarters. Secretary IT Division, Ishfaq Mehmood, senior PTCL officials and private companies’ executives attended the ceremony.
The minister said Pakistan had now world class’ IT infrastructure and it was as good as Florida’s. He said six months ago Internet was available in 29 cities and today it was available in 410 cities.
Prof Atta said it was his mission to provide universal Internet access at affordable prices to all parts of the country so that benefits of this technology did not remain limited to certain circles of people.
“We can qualify for Guinness Book of World Record for rapidly lowering bandwidth tariffs and spreading Internet in the shortest time,” he remarked.
The minister also commended the hard work put in by PTCL in the spread of Internet and increase in the bandwidth. He said that low tariff for bandwidth would be linked with the quality of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) besides exports and performance of software houses.
Chairman PTCL Akhtar Bajwa said that by expanding and modernizing IT and telecom and putting in place the STM-I IP connectivity, the country was taking a quantum jump towards promotion of technology and could look forward to a prosperous future. He said the inauguration of STM-I international bandwidth infrastructure would facilitate software, data, Internet and Call Center industry.
This new infrastructure would improve the quality of Internet services besides attracting foreign investment in the country for software development and call centre industry.
Akhtar Bajwa said that a number of new IT-based services would be in the offing using this new infrastructure. These new services like Inter ISP peering and high rate bandwidth (multiple of 2 MB) would be systematically rolled out in next few months.
The chairman PTCL said that one-window facility was being established to provide connectivity using STM-I infrastructure to the industry players. PTCL, he said, should be imparting necessary training and had deputed its staff for offshore training.
Besides international bandwidth provision and improvement in the delivery mechanism, PTCL is also undertaking projects to enhance and modernize its domestic IT infrastructure.
Source: The News
Date:6/16/2001
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