The 16-member SEA-ME-WE 5 Consortium, in which Dubai-based telco du is a stakeholder, has announced the completion of a 20,000km subsea cable infrastructure on schedule.
The project is in line with the UAE National Vision 2021 and the National Agenda of sustainable environment and infrastructure, news agency WAM reported.
It added the investments from du were instrumental in bringing SEA-ME-WE 5 to the UAE.
South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 5, or SEA-ME-WE 5, is an optical fibre submarine communications cable system spans 16 countries from Southeast Asia through the Middle East to Western Europe.
It was implemented with more than $500 million from consortium members.
“Our investment in the SEA-ME-WE 5 consortium is a reflection of our commitment to maintain and strengthen our position as a trusted partner for our customers who demand the highest quality solutions when it comes to their ICT needs,” said Farid Faraidooni, du’s chief operations officer.
The growth of mobile data and internet usage in the UAE is driving the demand for higher-capacity infrastructure. du chose to be a stakeholder in the project to help support its capacity demand in the domestic and regional markets, he added.
The subsea cable system is designed with a capacity of 24 terabits per second on 3-fibre pairs, capable of accommodating the future demand of data from other bandwidth-intensive applications such as enterprise data exchange, internet TV, and online gaming.
The SEA-ME-WE 5 submarine cable’s advanced 100Gbps technology is expected to meet the quadrupling of bandwidth demand between Europe and Asia.