A consortium of companies has started the construction of the SEA-ME-WE 6. This will be a submarine fiber optic cable with a total length of 19,200 kilometers, connecting Singapore with France and intermediate countries.
The start of construction follows two years of planning and designing the cable, reports Singtel, one of the driving forces of the consortium. The SEA-ME-WE 6 cable consists of ten fiber pairs with 12.6Tbit/s per pair for a total bandwidth of 126Tbit/s. SEA-ME-WE 6 stands for Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 and the cable connects, among others, entry point Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and optionally Greece and Italy, with Marseille in France at the other end.
The new cable should make the connection between Europe and Asia more robust and enable higher internet speeds with lower latency. The project was initiated by a consortium consisting of several telecom companies, such as France’s Orange, Singapore’s Singtel, Indonesia’s Telin and Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt and Telekom Malaysia. Construction should be completed in the first quarter of 2025.