TE and 4iG to Construct New Subsea Cable

The networking systems, services and software company, Ciena announces the completion of a major upgrade to the submarine fiber optic cable system SEA-ME-WE 5. The upgrade will support enterprise data exchange, internet TV, and online gaming and results in a 100 percent active capacity increase of the cable. The work was completed ahead of schedule, which had enabled faster broadband access to users along the multi-regional data superhighway.

Surges in 5G and video streaming services drive the need for network scalability, programmability, and intelligence between Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The SEA-ME-WE 5 cable system spans across 17 countries and has a length of 20,000 km. The submarine cable system operates at 100Gbps technology and is expected to meet multiplying bandwidth demand between Europe and Asia, providing the lowest latency and further enhancing network diversity and resilience in the high-traffic area.

SEA-ME-WE 5 is now able to increase the value of the cable system and accelerate growth by leveraging Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme.

GeoMesh Extreme features the 6500 Packet-Optical platform, to meet unpredictable traffic demands and provide new levels of capacity and flexibility for service providers. Additionally, Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai platform will help lower the cost per 100Gbps significantly by increasing the capacity per wave up to 300Gbps.

Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution which supports an open architecture will enable SEA-ME-WE 5’s customers to rapidly scale capacity, protect traffic from faults, and lower total cost of network ownership.

In addition, SEA-ME-WE 5 will also leverage Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller software to get real-time visibility into the performance of the network.

PG Co-chairs of SEA-ME-WE 5, Luigi Sangiorgio and Mukthar Bin Embong commented that Ciena was helping them to take on future network challenges and maximize the SEA-ME-WE 5 cable with state-of-the-art technology. With Ciena, the cable system is able to deliver the benefits of greater capacity and flexibility to our customers sooner than expected as this latest cable upgrade was completed ahead of schedule.

Ian Clarke, Vice President of Global Submarine Sales, Ciena said that the SEA-ME-WE 5’s latest upgrade was a great reflection of the dynamic digital transformation that was taking place along Europe to Asia route, which was experiencing an overwhelming demand for capacity. Ciena has the strength in developing subsea innovations coming out of the company’s keen understanding of the right mix of technologies needed to transition to adaptive networks that leverage intelligence, scalability, and programmability.”

The 20,000-km SEA-ME-WE 5 cable system, spanning over 17 countries from Southeast Asia to Western Europe, is a technological breakthrough that marks a global communications milestone. It was originally designed with a capacity of 24 Terabits per second. The system is currently under upgrade to over 36 Terabit per second on 3-fiber pairs, fully capable of accommodating the future demand of data from other bandwidth-intensive applications such as enterprise data exchange, internet TV and online gaming.

The SEA-ME-WE 5 cables’ advanced 100Gbps technology is expected to meet the quadrupling of bandwidth demand between Europe and Asia, providing the lowest latency and further enhancing the network diversity and resilience to the heavily loaded Asia to Europe route. In contrast with other submarine cable systems, the SEA-ME-WE 5’s main endpoints are carrier-neutral/open Points-of-Presence (PoPs) and not just Cable Landing Stations (CLS).