Sea-Me-We 5 Subsea Cable Lands in Saudi Arabia

The Saudi Telecommunication Company (STC) announced the landing of the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (Sea-Me-We 5) submarine cable in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.

Tethered from Singapore to France, 19 international operators invested in the cable, which connects Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Italy and France.

Dr. Homoud Al-Kussayer, STC VP for Wholesale explained that Yanbu was selected as a landing site for ease of connections to Riyadh and Jeddah, as well as the fact that the seabed off its shore is very favorable for submerging the cable.

Once landing in all international sites is complete, the subsea cable will go into operation, with current expected date set for December 2016.

Upon completion, the 20,000 km cable system will provide 24 Terabits per second (Tbit/s) of capacity utilizing the 100 Gbit/s coherent transmission technology.

Earlier this year the cable has been connected to the landing station in Melaka, Malaysia and La Seyne-sur-Mer, South of France.