SEA-ME-WE 3

SEA-ME-WE 3

Cable type	Fibre-optic
Fate	Active
Construction finished	2000
Lit capacity	480 gbit/s/pair (two fibre pairs)
Owner(s)	Consortium
Website	http://www.smw3.com/

SEA-ME-WE 3 or South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3 is an optical submarine telecommunications cable linking those regions and is the longest in the world, completed in late 2000. It is operated by India's Tata Communications and 92 other investors from the telecom industry. It was commissioned in March 2000.

It is 39,000 kilometres (24,000 mi) in length and uses Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology with Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) transmission to increase capacity and enhance the quality of the signal, especially over long distances (this cable stretches from North Germany to Australia and Japan).

According to the cable system network administrator's website, the system capacity has been upgraded several times. The cable system itself has two fibre pairs, each carrying (as of May 2007) 48 wavelengths of 10 Gbit/s

Landing points

The route (in red) and landing points (numbered in black)

It has 39 landing points in:

1. Norden, Germany
2. Oostende, Belgium
3. Goonhilly, England, UK
4. Penmarch, France
5. Sesimbra, Portugal
6. Tetuan, Morocco
7. Mazara del Vallo, Italy
8. Chania, Greece
9. Marmaris, Turkey
10. Yeroskipou, Cyprus
11. Alexandria, Egypt
12. Suez, Egypt
13. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
14. Djibouti, Djibouti
15. Muscat, Oman
16. Fujairah, United Arab Emirates
17. Karachi, Pakistan
18. Mumbai, India
19. Cochin, India
20. Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka
21. Pyapon, Myanmar
22. Satun, Thailand
23. Penang, Malaysia (Where it meets the SAFE and the FLAG cables.)
24. Medan, Indonesia
25. Tuas, Singapore
26. Jakarta, Indonesia
27. Perth, Australia
28. Mersing, Malaysia
29. Tungku, Brunei
30. Da Nang, Vietnam
31. Batangas, Philippines
32. Taipa, Macau
33. Deep Water Bay, Hong Kong
34. Shantou, China
35. Fangshan, Taiwan
36. Toucheng, Taiwan
37. Shanghai, China
38. Keoje, South Korea
39. Okinawa, Japan

Service disruptions

In July 2005, a portion of the SEA-ME-WE 3 submarine cable located 35 kilometres (22 mi) south of Karachi that provided Pakistan's major outer communications became defective, disrupting almost all of Pakistan's communications with the rest of the world, and affecting approximately 10 million Internet users.

On 26 December, 2006 this link severed, causing major disruption to internet services to and from the Far East. The cause of this was suspected to be a magnitude 7.1 earthquake off the coast of Taiwan. It was stated that the link would take 3 weeks to repair.

On 30 January, 2008 an apparent ship's anchor off Egypt's Alexandria coast is thought to have cut the newer SEA-ME-WE 4 cable, which is intended to provide redundancy, causing slow Internet connections and disruption to international calls to the U.S. and Europe from the Middle East and South Asia. Over 70 percent of the network in Egypt was down. Although central to India's largest carrier, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, the deputy-director general of that organisation said "Only 10 to 15 percent of our connectivity with the international gateway faced problems".

On 19 December, 2008, the cable was again severed, simultaneously with SEA-ME-WE 4, the FLAG FEA cable, and the GO-1 cable.

On 12 December, 2010, the cable was again severely affected due to a cable break somewhere between the Alexandria and Sesimbra segments. The fault was later located 31km from the Alexandria cable station.

See also

• List of international submarine communications cables
• Other Australian international submarine cables (and year of first service):
  • Pipe Pacific Cable (2009)
  • Telstra Endeavour (2008)
  • Australia-Japan Cable (2001)
  • Southern Cross Cable (2000)
  • JASURAUS (1997)
  • Pacrim West (1995)

Several other cable systems following a substantially similar route to SEA-ME-WEA 3 between Asia and Western Europe:

• Europe-India Gateway (EIG)
• FLAG Europe Asia
• I-ME-WE
• SEA-ME-WE 4

References

• Data from the official website