Alcatel-Lucent Starts Sea-Me-We 5 Subsea Cable Construction

The South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) consortium has announced that the contract for the deployment of the SEA-ME-WE 5 undersea cable system spanning 20,000 km from Singapore to France has come into force.

The new 100G SEA-ME-WE 5 will deliver ultra-broadband capacity and faster access to consumers and businesses. Its ultimate design capacity of 24 Terabit per second (Tbit/s) will be used to serve the countries along its route.

The system wil connect Singapore to Europe (Italy and France) and traverse Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Yemen, Djibouti and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Alcatel-Lucent has started construction of the segments spanning from Sri Lanka to France. Co-contractor NEC will be deploying the Singapore to Sri Lanka segment.

Ms Linette Lee , Chairperson of the SEA-ME-WE 5 Management Committee said: “With the rollout of the SEA-ME-WE 5 system, we will deliver a dynamic and agile way to serve end-users and offer them the quality of service they need. Alcatel-Lucent and NEC’s 100G undersea technology will help us in setting a new milestone in the further development of this route.”

Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks said: “We are pleased to start working on the construction of the SEA-ME-WE 5 system to deliver a state-of–the-art infrastructure that will combine several advantages in terms of innovation, flexibility and reliability to decongest existing systems and will offer end-users an increased service experience.”