South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) is an

optical fibre An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means ...

submarine communications cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried te ...

system that carries telecommunications between

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million pe ...

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia ( The Middle East). It is located at ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries by area, fifth-largest country in Asia ...

, Sudan,

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Med ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , religi ...

and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

. It is intended to be a complement to, rather than a replacement for, the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable. The cable is approximately 18,800 kilometres long, and provides the primary

Internet backbone The Internet backbone may be defined by the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected computer networks and core routers of the Internet. These data routes are hosted by commercial, government, academic and other high-c ...

between

South East Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

, the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India ...

, the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

Network topology

The SEA-ME-WE 4 system is divided into four segments with seventeen landing points:

Segments

*S1 -

Tuas Tuas is a planning area located within the West Region of Singapore. It is bounded by the Western Water Catchment to its north, Pioneer to its east and the Straits of Johor to its west. Tuas also shares a maritime boundary with the Western Isla ...

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

*S2 -

Suez Suez ( ar, السويس '; ) is a seaport city (population of about 750,000 ) in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez (a branch of the Red Sea), near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same b ...

*S3 -

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandr ...

*S4 -

Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fran ...

;Landing points #

Annaba Annaba ( ar, عنّابة, "Place of the Jujubes"; ber, Aânavaen), formerly known as Bon, Bona and Bône, is a seaport city in the northeastern corner of Algeria, close to the border with Tunisia. Annaba is near the small Seybouse Ri ...

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , religi ...

Bizerte Bizerte or Bizerta ( ar, بنزرت, translit=Binzart , it, Biserta, french: link=no, Bizérte) the classical Hippo, is a city of Bizerte Governorate in Tunisia. It is the northernmost city in Africa, located 65 km (40mil) north of the ca ...

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

Palermo Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The city is noted for it ...

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo met ...

(overland) #

(overland/return) # Jeddah,

Fujairah Fujairah City ( ar, الفجيرة) is the capital of the emirate of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. It is the seventh-largest city in UAE, located on the Gulf of Oman (part of the Indian Ocean). It is the only Emirati capital city on the ...

:10.

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former ...

:11.

:12.

Colombo Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo me ...

:13.

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of ...

:14.

Cox's Bazar Cox's Bazar (; bn, কক্সবাজার, Kôksbajar; ) is a city, fishing port, tourism centre, and district headquarters in Southeastern Bangladesh. It is located south of the city of Chittagong. Cox's Bazar is also known by the na ...

:15.

Satun Satun (, , ms, Setul) is a town (''thesaban mueang'') in southern Thailand, capital of the Satun Province. It covers the whole ''tambon'' Phiman of Mueang Satun. Satun lies 985 km south of Bangkok. As of 2005 it has a population of 21,498 ...

:16. Pengkalan Balak,

Malacca Malacca ( ms, Melaka) is a state in Malaysia located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula, next to the Strait of Malacca. Its capital is Malacca City, dubbed the Historic City, which has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site s ...

:17.

History

The SEA-ME-WE 4 cable system was developed by a consortium of 16 telecommunications companies which agreed to construct the project on 27 March 2004. Construction of the system was carried out by Alcatel Submarine Networks (now a division of

Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...

) and

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

. The eighteen month construction project was completed on 13 December 2005 with a cost estimate of US$500 million. Segment 1 construction, running 8,000 kilometres from Singapore to India, was done by Fujitsu, which also provided the

submarine repeater A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried t ...

equipment for Segment 4.

Outages

30 January 2008

On 30 January 2008, Internet services were widely disrupted in the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent following damage to the SEA-ME-WE 4 and

FLAG A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design emp ...

Telecom cables in the Mediterranean Sea. Disruptions of 70 percent in Egypt, and 60 percent in India were reported along with problems in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. In India, small users felt the impact while ISPs could service large users who have more lucrative contracts. While the respective contributions of the two cable systems to this blackout is unclear, network outage graphs show anomalies at 04:30 UTC and again at 08:00 UTC. The

FALCON Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene. Adult falcons ...

submarine communications cable was reported severed off the coast of Dubai in the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The bo ...

on 1 February 2008, making it the third over a two-day period. Though the cause of the damage to SEA-ME-WE 4 or FLAG has not been declared by either cable operator and 12 hours of video before and after the incident show no ships being in the area, a number of sources speculate these were caused by a ship's anchor near Alexandria, while the Kuwait government attributes the breaks to "weather conditions and maritime traffic". ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reported that the damage occurred to the two systems separately near Alexandria and Marseilles. The water near Alexandria is restricted and Egypt knew of "no passing ships" at the time. For a number of days, SEA-ME-WE 3 was the only remaining cable connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt. Data transmission capacity between India and Europe was reduced by 75 percent, causing much of the traffic between these sites to be rerouted through the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

19 December 2008

On 19 December 2008, the cable was again severed, simultaneously with SEA-ME-WE 3, the FLAG FEA cable, and the

GO-1 GO-1 is a submarine communications cable system that links Sicily to Malta, operated by the Maltese telecommunications company GO. It currently consists of a single cable, laid in 1995, linking St George's Bay in Malta to Catania in Sicily. Th ...

cable. It was expected to be operating again by 25 December.

14 April 2010 shunt fault

On 14 April 2010 the cable had a shunt fault approximately 1,886 kilometers from Alexandria towards Palermo, Italy, on the segment between Alexandria and Marseille.

May 2010 fault

Another cable fault, disrupting the connection between Malaysia, Mumbai and Europe.

5 July 2010

Services between Mumbai and Mombasa were down from 9:19 GMT/5 July 2010. Services in South Africa, all regions was also experienced and rerouting was experienced. On Mweb's website it was listed as ADSL Outage number 8084.

11 May 2012 fault

The submarine cable South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SeaMeWe-4) was reportedly cut near Alexandria, disrupting internet services in Pakistan. Reportedly SMW4 was cut in April 2012 too, but was restored on the same day.

6 June 2012 fault

On this day, at around 18:30 (GMT+8), Sea-Me-We 4 had a cut near Singapore causing disruption to voice and internet services from Singapore and Malaysia to Bangladesh. Service disruption affected the eastern route into Bangladesh while western one is not affected.

27 March 2013 fault

A cut in the segment 4 of South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) submarine optical fiber cable on Wednesday morning (27 March 2013) has been reported leading to a degradation of internet speed by 60% in several countries including Pakistan and Egypt. A consortium of SEA-ME-WE-4 Cable System is working on the fault but they have not come up with a resolution time for this problem and confirmed nature of fault is yet to be determined Three men were arrested for trying to cut the cable near Alexandria. The issue was resolved on the 8 April 2013.

25–28 December 2013 fault

Fiber cut in SMW4 segment 3 (Egypt terrestrial path). Slow internet speeds throughout Pakistan according to a tweet from a Pakistan telecom engineer.

20 November - 18 December 2014 fault

Fiber had a fault, according to a news article. Unconfirmed reports claim that it was repaired on 18 December, although its effects were still being observed for at least several days more.

19 January 2015 fault

According to news articles, this fiber had a technical issue. These reports claimed that this would be repaired within a week.

22 October 2015 fault

Fiber cut in SMW4 (Algeria Path), according to a news article. "The internet access will be disrupted for several days in Algeria following a cut on a submarine cable linking Annaba (600 km east of Algiers) to Marseille ( south -eastern France), announced Thursday, October 22 Algeria Telecom in a statement". Unconfirmed reports on when it was due to be repaired, its effects were still being observed until 26 October.

13-15 April 2017 fault

Fiber damaged in SMW4 (Algeria Path), according to a news article. "The internet access will be disrupted for several hours from Friday at 01:00 to 18:00 in Algeria following a cut on a submarine cable linking Annaba (600 km east of Algiers) to Marseille (south -eastern France). The damage caused to the landing chamber caused by the bad weather recorded on the coast of Annaba on 6 March 2016, Algeria Telecom Initiated several actions aimed at securing and protecting these installations ... ", explained the same source announced 3 days before, 12 April Algeria Telecom in a statement. These reports claimed that this would be repaired within two days. However, another report explained that the cable was still being repaired on 15 April due to some technical complications.

Management and administration

The SEA-ME-WE 4 cable system was proposed and developed by the SEA-ME-WE 4 Consortium. The Consortium continues to maintain and operate the system. It comprises 16 telecommunications companies: *

Algérie Télécom Algeria Telecommunications Corporation (, ) is a state-owned and the main telephone company in Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , ...

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , religi ...

* Bharti Infotel Limited,

Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL) is a fiber optic submarine cable telecommunications company and telecommunications service provider (IIG and ISP) based in Bangladesh. Emerging in July 2008 BSCCL presently handles Bangladesh's ...

CAT Telecom Public Company Limited CAT Telecom Public Company Limited ( th, บริษัท กสท โทรคมนาคม จำกัด (มหาชน)) is the state-owned company that runs Thailand’s international telecommunications infrastructure, including its ...

* Emirates Telecommunication Corporation (ETISALAT),

UAE The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (The Middle East). It is located at th ...

France Telecom Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

- Long Distance Networks,

* MCI,

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd., commonly known as PTCL ( ur, ) is the national telecommunication company in Pakistan.Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

Singapore Telecommunications Limited Singapore Telecommunications Limited, commonly known as Singtel, is a Singaporean telecommunications conglomerate and one of the four major telcos operating in the country. The company is the largest mobile network operator in Singapore with ...

(SingTel),

Sri Lanka Telecom PLC SLT-MOBITEL (formerly known as Sri Lanka Telecom, si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා ටෙලිකොම්, Śrī Laṃkā Ṭelikom, ta, ஸ்ரீலங்கா டெலிகொம்) is the national telecommunications services provide ...

(SLT),

Saudi Telecom Company Saudi Telecommunication Company (stylized as stc) (Arabic: شركة إتصالات السعودية ) is the Saudi digital enabler of telecommunications services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and among the operators in the Middle East. The comp ...

(STC),

Telecom Egypt Telecom Egypt ( ar, المصرية للاتصالات), is Egypt's primary telephone company. It started in 1854 with the first telegraph line in Egypt. In 1998, it replaced the former Arab Republic of Egypt National Telecommunication Organizati ...

(TE),

* Telecom Italia Sparkle S.p.A.,

Telekom Malaysia Berhad Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) is a Malaysian telecommunications company founded in 1984. Beginning as the national telecommunications company for fixed line, radio and television broadcasting services, it has evolved to become the country's larg ...

(TM),

Tunisie Telecom Tunisie Telecom is the incumbent telecom operator in Tunisia. Tunisie Telecom has more than 6 million subscribers in the fixed and mobile telephony, in Tunisia and abroad. It also plays an important role in improving the rate of internet penetrati ...

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

Tata Communications Tata Communications Limited (previously known as Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited) is an Indian telecommunications company. It was previously a government- owned-telecommunications service provider and under the ownership of Department of Teleco ...

previously

Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited Tata Communications Limited (previously known as Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited) is an Indian telecommunications company. It was previously a government- owned-telecommunications service provider and under the ownership of Department of Teleco ...

(VSNL),

The consortium is a

hierarchical organisation A hierarchical organization or hierarchical organisation (see spelling differences) is an organizational structure where every entity in the organization, except one, is subordinate to a single other entity. This arrangement is a form of a hiera ...

which operates, manages and administers the cable system. At the top of the hierarchy is the Management Committee, which steers the project. Bodies subordinate to the Management Committee include the Procurement Group; Operation and Maintenance; the Financial & Administrative Subcommittee; Assignment, Routing and Restoration; and Investment and Agreement. Other bodies in the organisation are the Central Billing Party which is subordinate to the Financial & Administrative Subcommittee, and the Network Administrator which is subordinate to Assignment, Routing and Restoration.

previously

(VSNL),

is the Network Administrator. For this purpose, Tata Comm has developed a state of the art Network Administration Software system which enables online request processing, job scheduling and report generation etc. This system will make the capacity management very efficient for bandwidth owners. This system is accessible online at http://www.seamewe4.net.

is the Central Billing Party.

Applications

SEA-ME-WE 4 is used to carry "telephone, internet, multimedia and various broadband data applications". The SEA-ME-WE 3 and the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable systems are intended to provide redundancy for each other. The two cable systems are complementary, but separate, and 4 is not intended to replace 3. Both derive from the same series of projects ( SEA-ME-WE), but have different emphases. SEA-ME-WE 3 is far longer at 39,000 kilometres (compare to SEA-ME-WE 4's 18,800 kilometres) and extends from Japan and Australia along the bottom of the Eurasian landmass to Ireland and Germany. SEA-ME-WE 4 has a faster rate of data transmission at 1.28 Tbit/s against SEA-ME-WE 3's 0.96 Tbit/s. SEA-ME-WE 3 provides connectivity to a greater number of countries over a greater distance, but SEA-ME-WE 4 provides far higher data transmission speeds intended to accommodate increasing demand for high-speed internet access in developing countries.

Technologies

The cable uses dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM), allowing for increased communications capacity per fibre compared to fibres carrying non-multiplexed signals and also facilitates bidirectional communication within a single fibre. DWDM does this by

multiplexing In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...

different

wavelength In physics, the wavelength is the spatial period of a periodic wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, tr ...

s of

laser light A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...

on a single optical fibre so that multiple

optical carrier Synchronous optical networking (SONET) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth Engli ...

signals can be concurrently transmitted along that fibre. Two fibre pairs are used with each pair able to carry 64 carriers at 10 Gbit/s each. This enables

terabit per second In telecommunications, data-transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mul ...

speeds along the SEA-WE-ME 4 cable, with a total capacity of 1,280 Gbit/s. In February 2011 the consortium awarded contracts to upgrade submarine segments capacity to 40 Gbit/s per link, along with landing sites equipment capable of 100 Gbit/s for future needs. On February 3, 2015 Mitsubishi Electric announced that it has completed the upgrade and the expansion of the South East Asia ─ Middle East ─ Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) Cable System. Mitsubishi Electric supplied its 100G MF-6900GWS Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTE) with incorporated superior coherent technology for all 16 landing stations to upgrade the current 40 Gbit/s cable system to 100 Gbit/s and expand the ultimate design capacity from 2,800 Gbit/s to 4,600 Gbit/s. The new SLTE doubled the data capacity per rack and reduce power consumption per unit of data volume by 47% for each station.

Interception

In August 2013 a major German newspaper claimed that an alliance of Western and Asian intelligence agencies has managed to tap into the cable. The ''

Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of SZ is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and social-democrat. Histo ...

'', Germany’s largest broadsheet newspaper, wrote that

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

has been leading the interception effort, supported by the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

, which is GCHQ’s American equivalent. The paper cited

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and s ...

as the source of the information.John Goetz, Hans Leyendecker and Frederik Obermaier (28 August 2013)
"British Officials Have Far-Reaching Access To Internet And Telephone Communications"
(accessed 30.8.2013)

References

External links

South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 4 project websiteSEA-ME-WE4 Network Administration SystemWork begins to repair severed net
5 February 2008) {{Submarine communications cables in the Pacific Ocean Submarine communications cables in the Arabian Sea Submarine communications cables in the Indian Ocean Submarine communications cables in the Mediterranean Sea Submarine communications cables in the Pacific Ocean Submarine communications cables in the Red Sea 2005 establishments in Africa 2005 establishments in Asia 2005 establishments in Europe 2005 establishments in Tamil Nadu 2005 establishments in Maharashtra Telecommunications in India

Network topology

Segments

History

Outages

30 January 2008

19 December 2008

14 April 2010 shunt fault

May 2010 fault

5 July 2010

11 May 2012 fault

6 June 2012 fault

27 March 2013 fault

25–28 December 2013 fault

20 November - 18 December 2014 fault

19 January 2015 fault

22 October 2015 fault

13-15 April 2017 fault

Management and administration

Applications

Technologies

Interception

See also

References

External links