SMW3 - SEA-ME-WE3

Africa Network Connections

SMW3 - SEA-ME-WE3

Further to the success of the SEA-ME-WE 2 ("South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 2") submarine cable project started during the late 80s, Singapore Telecom and France Telecom started in 1993 some preliminary studies for a follow-on high capacity cable linking Europe to the Asia-Pacific region.

In December 1994, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by 16 Parties for the development of the SEA-ME-WE 3 project between Western Europe and Singapore. In November 1996, additional MOU(s) were signed to extend the system from Singapore to the Far East and to Australia. Finally, in January 1997, the Construction and Maintenance Agreement for SEA-ME-WE 3 was signed by 92 International Carriers. By end-2000 the entire network was completed.

SEA-ME-WE 3 includes 39 landing points in 33 countries and 4 continents from Western Europe (including Germany, England and France) to the Far East (including China, Japan and Singapore) and to Australia.

SEA-ME-WE 3 is the longest system in the world with a total length of 39,000 km. The use of Wavelength Division Multiplexing greatly increases the capacity of the network, allowing high quality transmission all the way over distances as far as from Germany to Australia.

The System capacity, as at August 2003, had been upgraded twice already and today it consists of two fibre pairs each carrying 8 wavelengths. Some wavelengths operate at 10G whilst others at 2.5G. In 2006, the 2nd 10G Upgrade was completed which increased SEA-ME-WE-3 system capacity significantly. In May 2007, SEA-ME-WE-3 Management Committee announced the completion of another 10G upgrade for 48 wavelengths or so-called 3rd 10G Upgrade, and subsequently the 5th Notional Capacity Expansion was distributed to all the owners.

Landing points are: