The proposed South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable project will connect 12 countries – Bangladesh, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and United Arab Emirates.

Besides Infocomtech, the other partners in the consortium are Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board, Bharti Telesonic, Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, France Telecom, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, PT Indosat, Saudi Telecom, Srilanka Telecom Limited (SLT), Telecom Egypt, Telecom Italia S.p.A, Telekom Malaysia Berhad, and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited.

With a proposed design capacity of 1.28 Terabits per second, the cable project will be built using DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology.  The proposed network will provide much needed bandwidth as the existing cables along the same route are increasingly becoming saturated.  Currently, data traffic from South East Asia and the Middle East to Europe is routed via smaller capacity cables, mainly SEA-ME-WE 3 and FLAG.   

Mr Lim Shyong, Infocomtech’s Executive Vice President (Global Business), said: “Though the current market situation might not seem conducive to embark on this project, this is the opportune time for us to gather like-minded partners to plan and build a network to ease the expected bandwidth bottleneck between Asia and Europe.  By working with reputable partners, we will have strong bargaining power with the cable suppliers, and expect to achieve substantial cost savings.”
 

Mr Lim added: “Infocomtech believes in investing in infrastructure to ensure that our customers continue to enjoy global connectivity, even as demand for bandwidth increases.  This potential investment is in line with our strategy to build and operate a world-class telecoms infrastructure.  Looking ahead, we believe the new cable will be in a prime position to capture a sizable share of traffic between Asia, the Middle East and Europe when market conditions improve.”