Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (TOKYO: 6503) says it has finished an upgrade to the India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE) Cable Network that has added 40-Gbps DWDM capabilities to the undersea cable network. Mitsubishi’s work included the installation of submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) in eight countries.
The IMEWE Cable System was commissioned in 2010 as a 10-Gbps DWDM system to connect India to Europe via the Middle East (see "IMEWE broadband submarine cable begins operations, links the Middle East to India and Europe"). The 12,091-km cable system includes 10 terminal stations owned by a consortium of nine telecom carriers in eight countries: India, Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Italy, and France. The consortium includes Bharti Airtel Ltd., Emirates Telecommunications Corp., France Telecom, OGERO Telecom, Pakistan Telecommunications Co. Ltd., Saudi Telecom Co., TATA Communications Ltd., Telecom Egypt, and Telecom Italia SPARKLE S.p.A.
The cable system has three fiber-optic cable pairs with two fiber pairs on an express path, as well as a terrestrial link between the cities of Alexandria and Suez in Egypt.
Mitsubishi Electric says the new SLTE include advanced forward error correction and high-speed coherent technologies. The upgrade will boost network capacity to a maximum of 3.2 Tbps or more per fiber by adding more 40-Gbps SLTE.
"Mitsubishi Electric has carried out assigned upgrade work of the IMEWE system in an extremely professional way. IMEWE parties are very happy and satisfied with the completion of upgrade work executed by Mitsubishi Electric in about 7 months which is a record for consortium cables. This timely completion of upgrade shall go a long way in meeting the ever growing bandwidth demand of countries landing the IMEWE system," said KP Tiwari, chairman, management committee, IMEWE.
"We are very pleased to have completed the IMEWE Cable Network capacity upgrade, thereby delivering added quality and reliability in response to our customers' high evaluation of our technical strengths," said Masahiro Tsukamoto, general manager of Mitsubishi Electric's Telecommunication Global Business Department. "Our technical strengths have become highly acclaimed worldwide, as evidenced by additional orders we have received for work on transoceanic cable networks, including the transatlantic TAT-14 and the transpacific Asia America Gateway (AAG). Now, we would like to thank the nine IMEWE parties for their support in achieving the IMEWE upgrade, and we look forward to continuing to provide our customers enhanced network speed and capacity."
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