Construction
of a high-speed submarine cable connecting France to Singapore via Djibouti and
Egypt in Africa will be co-financed by telecoms giant Orange.
The
20,000 km Sea-Me-We 5, which stands for South East Asia-Middle East-Western
Europe 5, is planned to connect Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand,
Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka, India, Pakistan, Oman, the United Arab
Emirates, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy and France.
Orange
is a member of an international consortium building the network, which is
expected to come online at the end of 2016.
Development
of Sea-Me-We 5 also follows on from the establishment of Sea-Me-We 3 in 1999,
Sea-Me-We 4 in 2005 and IMeWe in 2010.
Orange
co-owns these three other submarine cables as well.
“In
addition to providing extra capacity, the Sea-Me-We 5 cable provides Orange
with an alternative route that guarantees the protection of voice and data
traffic passing through the other cables in the area,” said Orange in a press
statement released last week.
“Moreover,
thanks to the inter-connection point in Djibouti, Orange can open up a new
route towards the Indian Ocean to support the booming growth of broadband
services in the islands of Reunion and Mayotte,” said Orange.
The Sea-Me-We
5 cable design is based on 100 Gbps technology and is expected to offer a
capacity of 24 Tbps, according to Orange.
Orange’s
move to co-finance Sea-Me-We 5 also follows on the French telecom operator’s
announcement last week that it has opened West Africa’s first large-capacity
internet protocol (IP) Point of Presence (PoP) in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Orange
is also part of a consortium that has built the $700 million Africa Coast to
Europe (ACE) submarine cable, which links Europe to Africa’s West Coast.
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