SEA-ME-WE 5 consortium issues construction contracts

The consortium of 15 telecom operators behind the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) submarine network has issued contracts for construction of the undersea cable system that will run from Singapore to France. NEC Corp. (NEC; TSE: 6701) will construct the portion running from Singapore to Sri Lanka, while Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext and NYSE: ALU) has signed a contract that is says is worth several hundred million dollars for the link between Sri Lanka and France.

The 20,000-km SEA-ME-WE 5 system will feature 100-Gbps wavelengths and an ultimate design capacity of 24 Tbps. In addition to Singapore, Sri Lanka, and France, the submarine cable system will land in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Djibuti, Yemen, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Italy. The undersea cable system is scheduled to be completed in early 2016.

The consortium includes Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited, (BSCCL), China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, China United Network Communications Group Company, Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (PJSC), Orange, Myanma Posts and Telecommunications, Saudi Telecom Company, SingTel, Sri Lanka Telecom, TOT, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International, Telecom Italia Sparkle, Telekom Malaysia Berhad, and Yemen International Telecommunications (TeleYemen).

“As more data, applications, and services move to the cloud, we need a more dynamic and agile way to serve end-users according to low-latency and quality-of-service that cannot be solved by bandwidth alone,” said Linette Lee, chairperson of the SEA-ME-WE 5 Management Committee. “We are confident that Alcatel-Lucent and NEC’s 100G undersea technology will provide us with the flexibility to address the increasing requirements for connectivity, as well as address new growth areas such as cloud computing for remote access.”

Alcatel-Lucent will supply its 1620 Light Manager submarine line terminal, as well as project management, system design, marine operations and system commissioning. It also will also install cable and repeaters on its assigned portion of the network. NEC has not released details of the systems technology it will supply.

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