The SEA-ME-WE 6 (South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 6, or SMW6) is a submarine fiber optic cable system that stretches from Marseille, France to Tuas, Singapore, and TM is joining the consortium that is going to build it.
The consortium consists of Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel Ltd. (India) Dhiraagu (Maldives), Djibouti Telecom, Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Orange (France), Singtel (Singapore), Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia, Telin (Indonesia), Trans World Associates (Pakistan), China Mobile International, China Telecom Global Limited, China Unicom, and Microsoft (United States).
The 19,200km cable will link Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Oman, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and France.
It consists of 10 fiber pairs, with 12.6Tbps per fiber pair, and 126Tbps system capacity, using the latest SDM technology. The SWM6 is expected to cost approximately 500million USD.
In Malaysia, the cable will land in Morib, Selangor, TM’s latest international cable landing sites and the closest one to the Klang Valley.
The other three international cable landing sites are in Penang, Mersing and Melaka.
Previously TM has also invested in the construction of SEA-ME-WE 3, SEA-ME-WE 4, and SEA-ME-WE 5.
It currently owns and leases 30 submarine cable systems spanning more than 320,000 km globally.
The SEA-ME-WE 6 is expected to be operational in 2025.
