Alcatel-Lucent has signed a multi-million dollar contract with the South East Asia- Middle East- Western Eurpoe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) consortium to deploy a new 100Gbit/s undersea cable system.

The SEA-ME-WE 5 system will be 20,000km from Singapore to Europe and will deliver ultra-broadband capacity and fast access to consumers and businesses.

It will connect Singapore to France via Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Oman, United Arab Erimates, Djibuti, Yemen, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Italy.

Alcatel-Lucent will deploy the cable segments spanning from Sri Lanka to France and co-contractor NEC will carry out the Singapore to Sri Lanka part of the project.

The new submarine cable system is being deployed because of the increase in demand for broadband for new application such as cloud computing and on-demand video.