SINGAPORE: A new undersea cable will be built to connect Southeast Asia with the Middle East and Western Europe, easing the strain on existing cables and allowing more voice and data to be carried from one region to another. Called South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5), the undersea cable will connect 17 different countries and span some 20,000 km. Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), China Mobile, China Telecommunications, Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, Orange, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Telekom Malaysia are among the companies involved in the project. 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, SingTel said in a statement. It will also ease the strain on the heavily-loaded networks that currently connect Western Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia as well as offer an extra layer of network diversity, the Singapore telco added. SingTel declined to say how much it will invest in SEA-ME-WE 5 or state how much the project is likely to cost. The price tag for SEA-ME-WE 5 is likely to be into the hundreds of millions of dollars, judging by the more than US$500 million it took to build SEA-ME-WE 4 cable system. - CNA/xq
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 06:56:05 +0000
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