Construction starts on Asia-Europe undersea cable

The cable will improve digital connectivity

Construction has begun on a 19,200km undersea cable running from South East Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe, starting in Singapore and ending in France.

According to Singaporean telcoms company, Singtel, the new optical-fibre cable system, called the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6), will offer one of the lowest latencies between these regions at a transfer rate of 100 terabytes – 40,000 high-def videos – per second.

Its route will include the countries of Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India, Pakistan, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The project is being organised by a consortium made up of the telecoms companies along the route. Installation is by SubCom, a US-based engineer that specialises in making and deploying fibre-optic cables.

“With this new cable system, our partners will be able to meet and exceed capacity demands across multiple regions,” said Yue Meng Fai, 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.”

Planning for the installation of the cable has taken two years; it is estimated that it will be ready in the first quarter of 2025.