The consortium that developed the South East Asia, Middle East and Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) submarine cable was awarded the “Project of the Year – Subsea Award” at the Global Carrier Awards on 8 November 2016, in Paris. Sri Lanka Telecom, the country’s leading ICT Solutions Provider is a proud member of this consortium and has played a vital role in the creation of this submarine cable.

The award recognizes the SEA-ME-WE-5 Submarine Cable System and Consortium’s strong commitment to the industry, financial stability and technical know-how in developing one of the most ambitious and successful cable projects.

The 20,000-km SEA-ME-WE 5 cable system, spanning over 16 countries from Southeast Asia to Western Europe, is a technological breakthrough, which marks a milestone in global communications. It is designed with a capacity of 24 Terabytes per second (Tbps) on 3-fibre pairs, fully capable of accommodating the future demand of data from other bandwidth-intensive applications such as enterprise data exchange, Internet TV and online gaming.

Speaking about the Global Carrier Award, Mr. Priyantha Fernandez, the Chief Network Officer of SLT said, “This new, state-of-the-art, undersea, multi-regional superhighway brings a total of 48 Tbps of Gigantic Global Bandwidth to the country. This really enhances the reliability of Sri Lanka’s global connectivity to the east and west by investing over Rs. 5.2 billion for the project. This is also upgradable to serve any future demands. This is the longest submarine cable system spanning 20,000km and it has a uniquely low latency, which is unmatched by any submarine cable system on the planet. Through the double landing status of the Matara cable landing station, it connects 24 Tbps of bandwidth on the eastern cable, which travels from Singapore to Matara and another 24 Tbps bandwidth on the western cable, from Europe to Matara, thus leading to an unmatched bandwidth and improved diversity with larger capacity.”

When it is ready for service by the end of 2016, the SEA-ME-WE 5 cable’s advanced 100Gbps technology is expected to meet the quadrupling of bandwidth demand between Europe and Asia from 2016 to 2021, providing the lowest latency and further enhancing the network diversity and resilience to the heavily loaded Asia to Europe route. In contrast with other submarine cable systems, the SEA-ME-WE 5’s main endpoints are carrier-neutral/open, Points-of-Presence (PoPs) and not just Cable Landing Stations (CLS).

Over the past 11 years, the Global Carrier Awards have become the biggest and most prestigious awards event in the wholesale telecom calendar. More than 380 attendees attended this year’s event. A record number of over 200 entries were submitted for the awards this year and the winners were chosen by a panel of over 20 judges, which include leading analysts, industry experts and Capacity's senior editorial team. They were aided by a new scoring system, which was refined to ensure that the shortlisting and winners decisions remained objective and transparent.

The SEA-ME-WE 5 submarine cable is scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka in 2017 and will be stationed in Matara, providing the country’s citizens with the opportunity to enjoy additional capacity to connect to the world, thanks to high-speeds and immense capacities, provided by way of multiple 100G links. The core system of the SEA-ME-WE 5 is designed to span from Singapore to France and Italy through Sri Lanka in the most optimized route whilst enabling other parties to connect into the core system through their branch connectivity.