SEA-ME-WE 3
SEA-ME-WE3 or South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3 is an optical submarine telecommunications cable linking those regions and is the longest in the world. Completed in late 2000, it is led by France Telecom and China Telecom, and is administered by Singtel, a telecommunications operator owned by the Government of Singapore. The Consortium is formed by 92 other investors from the telecom industry. It was commissioned in March 2000.
| Cable type | Fibre-optic |
|---|---|
| Construction beginning | 1997 |
| Construction finished | 2000 |
| Design capacity | 0.02 Tbit/s (1999) 0.96 Tbit/s (2007) 1.28 Tbit/s (2009) 4.6 Tbit/s (2015) |
| Lit capacity | 2.3 Tbit/s per pair (two fibre pairs) |
| Owner(s) | 92 Party Consortium (5 Suppliers) |
| Website | http://www.smw3.com/ http://www.seamewe3.net/ |
It is 39,000 kilometres (24,000 mi) in length and uses wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) technology with Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) transmission to increase capacity and enhance the quality of the signal, especially over long distances (this cable stretches from North Germany to Australia and Japan).
According to the cable system network administrator's website, the system capacity has been upgraded several times. The cable system itself has two fibre pairs, each carrying (as of May 2007) 48 wavelengths of 10 Gbit/s.
In December 2009, the 4th 10G Upgrade increased WDM channels from 48 to 64 per fibre pair.
On 1 Jan 2015, the 5th Capacity Expansion was distributed to all the owners. Data capacity of the submarine network is increased significantly with 100G technologies.