Alcatel was awarded a multi-million dollar turnkey contract for a 10 Gbps upgrade of the 38,000 kilometer Sea-Me-We 3 submarine cable network. Alcatel will upgrade submarine sections linking the UK to India via France, Portugal, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti in Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Alcatel will also upgrade all terrestrial stations along the network. The upgrade is scheduled for completion by the end of 2005.
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- Sea-Me-We 3 includes 39 landing points in 33 countries and 4 continents from Western Europe (including Germany, England and France) to the Far East (including China, Japan and Singapore) and to Australia. The system, which entered service in 1997, was upgraded twice, as of August 2003. It consists of two fiber pairs, each carrying 8 wavelengths. Some wavelengths operate at 10 Gbps and others at 2.5 Gbps.
- In March 2004, Alcatel and Fujitsu were chosen to build a new terabit capacity Sea-Me-We 4 submarine cable network, which will span nearly 20,000 km and link 14 countries from France to Singapore via Italy, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia with 16 landing points.