Approximately 20,000 km submarine cable system to connect 17 countries by 2016
SEA-ME-WE 5 to offer 24,000 Gbps bandwith capacity

Singapore, 7 March 2014 – A group of leading telecommunications companies (telcos) have formed a consortium to build a state-of-the-art undersea South East Asia - Middle East -Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE) 5 cable.

Spanning approximately 20,000 km, SEA-ME-WE 5 is designed to connect 17 countries through Points-of-Presence (POPs) from Singapore to the Middle East to France and Italy in Western Europe.

Mr Bill Chang, Chief Executive Officer, Singtel Group Enterprise said: “Submarine cables is key to global communications and connectivity, overcoming distance and physical borders. Today, 95 per cent of the world’s voice, video and data traffic is transmitted via subsea data highways."

With significant growth in data traffic in recent years, SEA-ME-WE 5 will address the urgent need for a new generation data superhighway to cater to the increasing demand for next generation Internet applications. It will also ease the strain on the heavily loaded networks that currently connect Western Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia as well as offer an extra layer of network diversity.

“The SEA-ME-WE 5 new generation submarine cable system will enable bandwidth-intensive data and information to be delivered between Southeast Asia, Middle East and West Europe, and to the rest of the world even more swiftly. And this will accelerate the deployment of innovative web applications and solutions for consumers and enterprises.”

“By offering another layer of network diversity and resilience, SEA-ME-WE 5 consortium members and their customers can be assured of greater reliability in their international data networks and services,” he added.

The SEA-ME-WE 5 cable system is expected to start carrying commercial traffic by early 2016. It is designed to provide upgradable transmission facilities by adopting state-of-the-art 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) technology. Fully loaded, it is capable of carrying 24,000 Gbps of capacity, which is the equivalent of transmitting about 4,800 high-definition movies per second.