---
title: SEA-ME-WE 5 upgrade completed - Developing Telecoms
description: Networking systems, services and software company Ciena has announced the completion of a ‘significant’ upgrade to the SEA-ME-WE 5 submarine cable system to support enterprise data exchange, internet TV, and online gaming.
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date: 2019-09-17T12:35:54Z
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Networking systems, services and software company Ciena has announced the completion of a ‘significant’ upgrade to the SEA-ME-WE 5 submarine cable system to support enterprise data exchange, internet TV, and online gaming.

The upgrade – which was completed ahead of schedule – has, says Ciena, resulted in a 100% active capacity increase of the cable, enabling faster broadband access to users along the multi-regional data superhighway.

The South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) cable system, officially launched in 2017, is 20,000 km in length and spans over 17 countries. It provides broadband communications with a design capacity of 24 terabits per second – currently under upgrade to over 36 terabits per second on 3-fibre pairs – between South East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe: more than 17 countries in total.

The cable system’s advanced 100Gbps technology is expected to meet multiplying bandwidth demand between Europe and Asia, providing the lowest latency and further enhancing network diversity and resilience in the high-traffic area.

SEA-ME-WE 5 is able to increase the value of the cable system and accelerate growth by leveraging Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme, which features the 6500 Packet-Optical platform, to meet unpredictable traffic demands and provide new levels of capacity and flexibility for service providers.

Additionally, Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai platform will help lower the cost per 100Gbps by increasing the capacity per wave up to 300Gbps, while Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution will enable SEA-ME-WE 5’s customers to rapidly scale capacity, protect traffic from faults, and lower total cost of network ownership.

SEA-ME-WE 5 will also leverage Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller software to get real-time visibility into the performance of the networks.

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