A recent upgrade to the South East Asia – Middle East – Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) Submarine Cable System has nearly doubled its capacity. The upgrade was necessitated due to the increasing demand for bandwidth in the diverse and widespread geography served by the cable system.
Operated by a consortium of 16 telecom operators, SEA-ME-WE 4 is an approximately 18,800 km submarine cable connecting Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, and France. According to a press release, the upgrade enables a capacity increase from 65Tb/s to 122Tb/s on the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable system. This means the capacity has almost doubled!
“This upgrade holds particular significance given the pivotal role of the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable system in driving digitalisation efforts across the diverse regions where the system is passing through,” said Sidheeque Machinal, Management Committee Chairman, SEA-ME-WE 4 consortium.
The upgrade was carried out by Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution.
“The Europe-to-Asia route, where SEA-ME-WE 4 is situated, is experiencing a major digitalisation push, resulting in extreme capacity demands. With Ciena’s field-proven expertise in building critical submarine network infrastructure, we’re helping SEA-ME-WE 4 address rising capacity demands by making the switch to network architectures that adapt to leverage intelligence, scalability, and programmability,” said Thomas Soerensen, Vice President, Global Submarine Solutions, Ciena.
