Ciena completed an upgrade to the SEA-ME-WE 4 (South East Asia – Middle East – Western Europe 4) subsea cable, enabling a capacity increase from 65Tb/s to 122Tb/s.
Operated by a consortium of 16 telecom operators, SEA-ME-WE 4 is an approximately 18,800 km submarine cable connecting Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, and France.
The upgrade leveraged Ciena's GeoMesh Extreme and 6500 Packet-Optical platform. Additionally, Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics help significantly lower costs by increasing the capacity per wave up to 450Gb/s. SEA-ME-WE 4 is also utilizing Ciena’s Navigator Network Control Suite for real-time visibility into and control of network performance.
“The Europe-to-Asia route, where SEA-ME-WE 4 is situated, is experiencing a major digitalization push, resulting in extreme capacity demands. With Ciena’s field-proven expertise in building critical submarine network infrastructure, we’re helping SEA-ME-WE 4 address rising capacity demands by making the switch to network architectures that adapt to leverage intelligence, scalability, and programmability,” said Thomas Soerensen, Vice President, Global Submarine Solutions, Ciena.
“Ciena’s cutting-edge technology is helping us in optimizing the resources of the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable, thereby enhancing its capabilities to address evolving connectivity demands through enhancement in network capacity, flexibility, and durability. This upgrade holds particular significance given the pivotal role of the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable system in driving digitalization efforts across the diverse regions where the system is passing through,” said Sidheeque Machinal, Management Committee Chairman, SEA-ME-WE 4 consortium.
