Singtel in consortium for Singapore-France submarine cable system to be ready by 2025

A SUBMARINE cable system connecting multiple countries between Singapore and France has commenced construction, a consortium of companies which include Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) Z74 : Z74 0%announced on Monday (Feb 21).

The 19,200 kilometre-long submarine cable system will connect multiple countries from Singapore to France - traversing Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India, Pakistan, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It will be ready by the first quarter of 2025, Singtel said in a press statement.

The consortium, called the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6), includes Singtel, the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel (India), Dhiraagu (Maldives), Djibouti Telecom, Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Orange (France), Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia, Telin (Indonesia) and Trans World Associates (Pakistan).

Singtel said that SEA-ME-WE 6 will offer one of the lowest latencies available between South-east Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe, transferring more than 100 terabytes per second - or about 40,000 high-definition videos per second.

It will also provide an additional layer of "diversity and resilience" for the high traffic density route between Asia and Europe, as well as strengthen the overall network of each consortium partner through trans-Egypt's new geo diversified crossings and landing points.

This added flexibility means service providers in the consortium can rapidly scale capacity, protect traffic from faults and lower their total cost of network ownership, Singtel noted.

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Yue Meng Fai, SEA-ME-WE 6 management committee chairperson and Singtel's senior director of consortium cable engineering, said with even more people working and living remotely, the new cable system will provide faster broadband access to users along this multi-regional data superhighway. This is while supporting surges from changing working and consumption habits from 5G, remote working needs and video streaming demands, among others.

Shares of Singtel were trading 1.2 per cent or S$0.03 higher/lower a S$2.58 as at the Monday midday trading break.