Construction has commenced on a 19,200 km submarine cable system between Singapore and France. The Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6), a new optical-fibre cable system, will cover the route from Singapore to Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India, Pakistan, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
The subsea cable system will offer one of the lowest latencies between Asia and Europe with a transfer rate of 100 terabytes per second. The consortium comprising Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Dhiraagu, Djibouti Telecom, Airtel, Mobily, Orange, Singtel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia, and Telin will jointly develop the cable system.
The consortium has selected SubCom for the supply and installation of the 19,200-km submarine cable. SubCom will use SL17-SDM cable, which can accommodate up to 24 fibre pairs (FP) as well as an 18-kV power source technology, which will allow SEA-ME-WE 6 to sustain operations with single-end feed power. SubCom will also deliver its Enhanced Branching Unit (eBU), which combines shore-based telemetry management with flexible electrical power and optical fibre routing.
Works on SEA-ME-WE 6 is expected to be completed in 2025.
