The Southeast Asia-Middle East- Western Europe 6 consortium (SEA-ME-WE 6) selected Subcom for the supply and installation of a new 19,200 km undersea cable system connecting South East Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe at 12 locations from Singapore to France. The system is expected to be ready for service by the first quarter of 2025.
SubCom will utilize SL17-SDM cable, supporting up to 24 fiber pairs (FP). Production of the cable and equipment will take place at SubCom’s manufacturing campus in Newington, NH, USA.
The system consists of three segments: an undersea segment from Tuas (Singapore) to Ras Ghareb (Egypt), a terrestrial segment from Ras Ghareb (Egypt) to Port Said (Egypt), and another undersea segment from Port Said (Egypt) to Marseilles (France). The fiber pair capacities for each network segment have been individually designed, together with the segment fiber pair counts, resulting in multi-Terabits end-to-end capacity whilst optimizing the overall system price.
SEA-ME-WE 6 will use Subcom’s 18kV power source technology and is designed to maintain operations with single-end feed power in the event there is a far-end fault. Single-end power source capability is critical for the reliability and overall resilience of a system, particularly of extended length. SubCom’s system powering expertise and continued investment in research and development enables the company to support complex deployments requiring additional cable lengths.
To reliably support as much as 24FP on a trunk or branch port, SubCom will utilize its Enhanced Branching Unit (eBU), which provides flexible electrical power and optical fiber routing with shore-based telemetry control. The eBU latching power switching provides advanced internal management features for unit and user protection that include repair states, configurable restricted states, and a configurable power-down state that is selected for optimum system re- activation.
“SubCom is honored to drive the design, manufacture, and deployment of SEA-ME-WE 6, a system that will reach more than 11 countries and benefit hundreds of communities beyond,” said David Coughlan, CEO of SubCom. “We maintain the industry’s most advanced technology portfolio and marine installation capabilities, all of which will contribute to a successful project on behalf of the SEA-ME-WE 6 Consortium.
“With this new cable system, our partners will be able to meet and exceed capacity demands across multiple regions,” said Mr. Yue Meng Fai, Chairperson of the SEA-ME-WE 6 Management Committee and Senior Director, Consortium Cable Engineering, Singtel. “This new, reliable and resilient system encompasses some of the most advanced transmission technologies in the world and will improve access to services for everyone along this route.”
https://www.subcom.com/documents/2022/SEA-ME-WE_6_SubCom_CIF_21FEB2022.pdf
