Alcatel-Lucent to build undersea cable

Global telecom major Alcatel-Lucent has bagged the contract to build the new submarine cable "� India-Middle East-Western Europe (I-ME-WE) "� linking Mumbai to France from a consortium of nine operators. The financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

A terrestrial link will also be deployed in Egypt to connect the cities of Alexandria and Suez as part of the 13,000-km long I-ME-WE.

The new submarine cable will provide backhaul communications capabilities along the India-Western Europe route and increased capacity to support high-bandwidth broadband services, Alcatel-Lucent said in a release here today.

Alcatel-Lucent will build the turnkey system with the support of its subcontractor NEC Corporation who will provide and install the wet plant from Mumbai to Jeddah.

Apart from India's Bharti Airtel and Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL), Egypt telecom major Etisalat, France Telecom, Ogero Telecom, Telecom Egypt and Telecom Italia Sparkle are among the other members of the consortium.

The system is expected to be completed in the last quarter of 2009 and it will support global traffic growth for peer-to-peer Internet Portocol-based services including video applications, broadband Internet, downloading, voice and video calling among others.

The cable is being designed with a capacity of 3.84 terabits and has three fibre pairs, with two trunk cables connecting India to France through Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and Italy.

Along the route, the cable will have 10 landing points located in Mumbai (two), Karachi, Fujairah, Jeddah, Suez, Alexandria, Tripoli Catania and Marseilles.

"I-ME-WE reflects the need for enhanced capacity, connectivity and diversity to best meet the end-users' demands," said K P Tiwari, Chairman of the consortium's management committee.