SEA-ME-WE3 or South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3 is an optical

submarine telecommunications cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried tel ...

linking those regions and is the longest in the world. Completed in late 2000, it is led by France Telecom and China Telecom, and is administered by

Singtel Singapore Telecommunications Limited, commonly known as Singtel, is a Singaporean telecommunications conglomerate and one of the four major telcos operating in the country. The company is the largest mobile network operator in Singapore with ...

, a telecommunications operator owned by the

Government of Singapore The Government of Singapore is defined by the Constitution of Singapore to mean the executive branch of the state, which is made up of the president and the Cabinet. Although the president acts in their personal discretion in the exercise ...

. The Consortium is formed by 92 other investors from the telecom industry. It was commissioned in March 2000. It is in length and uses Wavelength Division Multiplexing (''WDM'') technology with

Synchronous Digital Hierarchy Synchronous optical networking (SONET) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting diode ...

(''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. In December 2009, the 4th 10G Upgrade increased WDM channels from 48 to 64 per fibre pair. On 1 Jan 2015, the 5th Capacity Expansion was distributed to all the owners. Data capacity of the submarine network is increased significantly with 100G technologies.

Landing points

It has 39 landing points which are in: #

Norden Norden is a Scandinavian and German word, directly translated as "the North". It may refer to: Places England * Norden, Basingstoke, a ward of Basingstoke and Deane * Norden, Dorset, a hamlet near Corfe Castle * Norden, Greater Manchester, a vil ...

, Germany #

Ostend Ostend ( nl, Oostende, ; french: link=no, Ostende ; german: link=no, Ostende ; vls, Ostende) is a coastal city and municipality, located in the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerk ...

, Belgium #

Goonhilly Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large radiocommunication site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the The Lizard, Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England. Owned by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd under a 999-year lease from BT Group pl ...

, United Kingdom #

Penmarch Penmarch (, ) is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany, northwestern France.Sesimbra, Portugal # Tetuan, Morocco # Mazara del Vallo, Italy # Chania, Greece # Marmaris, Turkey # Yeroskipou, Cyprus # Alexandria, Egypt # Suez, Egypt #

Jeddah Jeddah ( ), also spelled Jedda, Jiddah or Jidda ( ; ar, , Jidda, ), is a city in the Hejaz region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the country's commercial center. Established in the 6th century BC as a fishing village, Jeddah's pro ...

, Saudi Arabia # Djibouti, Djibouti # Muscat, Oman # Fujairah, United Arab Emirates # Karachi, Pakistan # Mumbai, India # Kochi, India #

Mount Lavinia Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia ( si, දෙහිවල-ගල්කිස්ස, translit=Dehivala-Galkissa; ta, தெஹிவளை-கல்கிசை, translit=Tehivaḷai-Kalkicai), population 245,974 (2012) is the largest suburb of the City of ...

, Sri Lanka # Pyapon, Myanmar # Satun, Thailand #

Penang Penang ( ms, Pulau Pinang, is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Malacca Strait. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay ...

, Malaysia # Medan, Indonesia # Tuas, Singapore #

Jakarta Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...

, Indonesia # Perth, Australia # Mersing, Malaysia # Tungku, Brunei #

Da Nang Nang or DanangSee also Danang Dragons ( ; vi, Đà Nẵng, ) is a class-1 municipality and the fifth-largest city in Vietnam by municipal population. It lies on the coast of the East Sea of Vietnam at the mouth of the Hàn River, and is one ...

, Vietnam # Batangas, Philippines # Taipa, Macau # Deep Water Bay, Hong Kong #

Shantou Shantou, alternately romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 2020 census (5,391,028 in 2010) and an administrative ...

, China # Fangshan, Taiwan #

Toucheng Toucheng Township () is an urban township in Yilan County, Taiwan. The township includes Guishan Island and Guiluan Island in the Philippine Sea. The Senkaku Islands, known in Mandarin as the Diaoyu Islands, are claimed as part of the township ...

, Taiwan # Shanghai, China # Geoje, South Korea # Okinawa, Japan

History

In December 1994, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed by 16 Parties for the development of the SEA-ME-WE3 project between Western Europe and Singapore. In November 1996, additional MOUs were signed to extend the system from Singapore to the Far East and to Australia. Finally in January 1997, the Construction and Maintenance Agreement for SEA-ME-WE3 was signed by 92 International Carriers. By end-2000 the entire network was completed.

Service disruptions

In July 2005, a portion of the SEA-ME-WE3 submarine cable located 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 GO-1 is a submarine communications cable system that links Sicily to Malta, operated by the Maltese telecommunications company GO. It currently consists of a single cable, laid in 1995, linking St George's Bay in Malta to Catania in Sicily. T ...

cable. On 25 December 2011, the cable was again severed.

2011 submarine cable disruption 2011 submarine cable disruption refers to two incidents of submarine communications cables cut off on 25 December 2011. The first cut off occurred to SEA-ME-WE 3 at Suez canal, Egypt and the second cut off occurred to i2i which took place between ...

. On 10 January 2013, the cable was again severed, this time 1,126 kilometres from the Tuas Cable Landing Station in Singapore, between

repeaters ''Repeaters'' is a 2010 Canadian thriller film directed by Carl Bessai, written by Arne Olsen, and starring Dustin Milligan, Amanda Crew, and Richard de Klerk as young drug addicts who find themselves stuck in a time loop. Plot Kyle, Sonia, and ...

345 and 346. The repair ship ASEAN Explorer was sent to the site. A permit was required from the Indonesian Authorities to effect repairs: on 3 March 2013 it was reported that "The cable ship operator has advised that the required permit to undertake works has not been granted. A tentative repair date of 09 April 2013 has been posted but still position isn't clear when it will get restore". On 30 November 2014, the cable again experienced a problem in the Jakarta to Perth sector. ASEAN Explorer appeared onsite of the cable breakage point on 24 December 2014 which involved over a week of repairs. Cable was restored on 1 January 2015. On 8 January 2015, the cable once again experienced problems on the Perth to Jakarta Section. On 15 September 2015 the cable was again cut at segment 3.3 causing significant disruption to services from Australia to Singapore. Service disruptions caused particular impact for Apple customers due to the release of the iPhone 6, iOS9 and OSX just prior to the cable cut. Apple's services were reported as being crippled for Telstra customers but the impact was noticeable for all other Australian ISP's. This disruption was expected to be repaired sometime after mid October 2015. This was the third time that the cable had been cut in this segment in just over two and a half years. On 25 September 2015 at 03:07 UTC, the cable once again experienced problems at SEA-ME-WE3's S3.3 (Perth-BU) at about 1143 km from Tuas cable station (between repeater R346 and R345). This was the same location as where the previous problem occurred, which took 3 months for Indonesian authorities to permit a cable ship to repair the damage. On 29 September 2015, it was advised that a cable ship had been mobilized to the area, to isolate and resolve the fault, with a tentative fix date of mid to late October 2015, however due to the complexity of repairing cables, this time frame was only an estimated time frame for a fix. On 27 September 2015 at 01:49 UTC, further faults were identified in the cable in SEA-ME-WE3's S3.1. The fault location was at 360 km from Ancol Cable Station (between repeater R108 & R109)., cable ship ASEAN Explorer was mobilised to this location. On 11 December 2016 at 9:30 AEST, Vocus Group confirmed that SEA-ME-WE3 failed due to a cable cut 1125 km from the Singapore Tuas Cable Landing Station. The ASEAN Explorer arrived at the location of the cable fault on 10 January 2017. A tentative repair window from 11–14 January 2017 was scheduled, subject to permit approvals. On 16 January 2017 Vocus advised that the repair works to SEA-ME-WE3 had been completed and all Ethernet and transit traffic in and out of Singapore has been restored. On 29 August 2017 Vocus Group confirmed a cable break on the Perth to Singapore segment (S3.3). On 27 September 2017, Cable Ship ASEAN Explorer confirmed a "shunt fault" on the insulating material either caused by ship anchors or sea currents. On 3 October 2017, a new issue was detected. On 16 October 2017, ASEAN Explorer completed repairs on the cable, and traffic was restored. On 3 December 2017 at 10:24 AEST, Vocus Group confirmed that SEA-ME-WE3 suffered a fault approximately 1126 km from the cable landing station in Singapore. Vocus confirmed that the break had been fixed as of 01:24 UTC 15 January 2018. On 11 May 2018 at 09:58 AEST, Vocus Group confirmed that SEA-ME-WE3 suffered two shunt faults approximately 28 km (in a deep trench which would require mobilisation of specially designed cable barge with deep de-trenching tool capability to perform recovery) and 231 km from the cable landing station in Singapore (S3.3). Vocus confirmed that the break had been fixed as of 1 June 2018. On 4 September 2018 at 09:34 AEST, Vocus Group confirmed that SEA-ME-WE3 had a fault on the segment between Perth and Singapore. This disruption led to the

Australia Singapore Cable The Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) is a 4,600 km fibre-optic submarine communications cable that entered service in September 2018, linking Australia and Singapore via Christmas Island and Indonesia. ASC is owned and operated by Vocus Com ...

being brought into service ten days early. On 26 October 2018 at 11:35 AEST, iiNet Group reported that SEA-ME-WE3 was down again. No status update has been posted by Vocus so far, however a post exists claiming that there was a possible cable fault from Perth Station to a branching unit between repeaters R342 and R343. On 20 September 2019 at 11:58 AEST, iTnews reported that the Perth to Singapore portion of the cable had been cut between repeaters 345 and 346.

Interception

In August 2013 a major German newspaper claimed that an alliance of Western and Asian intelligence agencies has managed to tap into the cable. The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'', Germany's largest broadsheet newspaper, wrote that GCHQ has been leading the interception effort, supported by the National Security Agency, which is GCHQ's American equivalent. The paper cited Edward Snowden as the source of the information. Australian media subsequently revealed that Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) also participates in the undersea cable interception operation, sharing massive amounts of intercepted data with its British and American counterparts: ''The Age'' said that the Australian interception activity is facilitated with the help of the Security and Intelligence Division of Singapore's Ministry of Defense.

SEA-ME-WE 2

SEA-ME-WE3 was based on the success of the earlier shorter cable SEA-ME-WE2. At the time of commissioning, 18 October 1994, SEA-ME-WE2 was the world's longest optical fibre submarine cable system at 18,751 km. The cable has two Single-mode optical fiber, single mode fibre pairs with a combined capacity of 1.12 Gbit/s, (2*560 Mbit/s), 151 repeaters and 9 branches.

Countries Linked

* Pakistan *Singapore *Indonesia *Sri Lanka *India *Saudi Arabia * Djibouti *Egypt *Tunisia *Algeria *Turkey *Cyprus *Italy *France *Myanmar

SEA-ME-WE

The SEA-ME-WE cable history started in June 1985 when the first 12/25 MHz capacity, 13.500 km long SEA-ME-WE cable llcommissioned using analog/copper technology. SEA-ME-WE cable was decommissioned in June 1999.

References

whirlpool topicData from the official website
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