SWM5 Wins Submarine Project of the Year at Global Carrier Awards

China Telecom is among the consortium that won the Project of the Year – Subsea award for the Southeast Asia–Middle East–Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE 5) submarine cable.

The award was presented at the Global Carrier Awards in Paris on November 8, 2016 and recognizes the project’s “strong industry commitment, financial stability and technical know-how in developing one of the most ambitious and successful cable projects.”

The SEA-ME-WE 5 cable system spans 20,000 kilometers and connects 16 countries across three continents from Southeast Asia to Western Europe, with a capacity of 24 Terabits per second.

“The SEA-ME-WE 5 cable system uses advanced 100 Gbps technology and is optimized for future upgrades to 200/400 Gbps to provide low-latency bandwidth and enhanced network diversity to meet the rapidly expanding demand for data transfer between Europe and Asia,” says Joe Han, President of China Telecom Americas.

SEA-ME-WE 5 Breaks Through Technological Barriers

After beginning construction in September 2014, the SEA-ME-WE 5 came into service in December 2016 and uses main endpoints that are carrier-neutral/open Points-of-Presence (PoPs) alongside a network of cable landing stations (CLS). This represents a technological breakthrough and means the SEA-ME-WE 5 is fully capable of meeting future demand.

China Telecom is proud to have worked alongside 19 of the world’s leading telecommunications providers in the 16-nation consortium that includes companies from Bangladesh, China, UAE, Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Pakistan and Egypt.

“China Telecom is among the leading Chinese IT service providers and the SEA-ME-WE 5 is part of our commitment to bringing enterprise internet to China and beyond,” says Mr. Han. “The project marks a global communications milestone and represents a significant systems upgrade for a worldwide network of users.”

Connecting Asia to Western Europe and the Middle East

The SEA-ME-WE 5 spans from Singapore in the east to France in the west, with PoPs at Singapore, Palermo (Italy) and Marseille (France). Cable landing stations also connect Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Djibouti, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey.

The SEA-ME-WE 5 is designed to facilitate network interconnection and is expected to improve performance with up to 20 percent latency reduction. It is also the first Europe-to-Asia cable to provide advanced PoP-to-PoP connectivity from open hubs in Europe.

The SEA-ME-WE 5 joins China Telecom’s vast global network of 33 submarine cables and high-speed terrestrial links that connect 72 countries and regions around the world with a total international transmission capacity of seven terabytes. China Telecom’s fiber cable network spans more than 83,000 kilometers and is the largest optical fiber network in the world.

“This is a major win for businesses in Southeast Asia that will now have a world-class data connection to the Middle East and Western Europe,” says Mr. Han. “It provides a sevenfold increase in capacity along the route and ushers in a new era of digital growth that will empower business innovation across the globe.”

For more information, hi-res images or to organize an interview, please contact Ming Wei, Director of Solution and Delivery, at [email protected]

About China Telecom Americas

China Telecom Americas is a wholly-owned US-based subsidiary of China Telecom Corporation, one of the world’s leading providers of integrated communications and information technology services to customers in over 70 countries around the globe. With headquarters in Herndon, Virginia, and offices in Dallas, Los Angeles, San Jose, Toronto and Sao Paolo, China Telecom Americas is advancing enterprise connectivity through a suite of locally-based, turnkey services from network architecture, cloud, and data center services to equipment management, content delivery and more. Discover more at www.ctamericas.com