Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) has announced that it has completed the landing of the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) undersea cable in Singapore, in the western part of the island at Tuas.

Projected to be go live later this year, the 20,000km SEA-ME-WE 5 connects 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.

Bandwidth quadrupled

SEA-ME-WE 5 has a design capacity of 24 Terabits per second on 3- fiber pairs, and will use 100Gbps technology from the get-go. Once completed, the cable is expected to meet the quadrupling of bandwidth demand between Europe and Asia from 2016 to 2021. Importantly, SEA-ME-WE 5 will offer the lowest latency for Internet traffic between Southeast Asia and Europe.

Construction of SEA-ME-WE-5 began in September 2014, and is backed by a consortium comprising 17 global players. The list of stakeholders includes telcos such as Orange, Telecom Italia, Singtel, China Unicom, China Telecom and China Mobile.

“As a multiregional data superhighway, the SEA-ME-WE 5 cable provides a sevenfold capacity increase along the corridor connecting Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe,” said the CEO of Singtel Group Enterprise in a statement.

“With our data centers in Singapore, our global customers can gain access to an enhanced network for managed services and cyber security solutions. The SEA-ME-WE 5 cable is a significant communications backbone that reinforces Singapore’s position as a global business and info-communications hub.”

Singtel has eight data centers in Singapore at the moment, and is slated to launch a new $400 million (US$285 million) data center later this year. When completed, the purpose-built seven-storey DC West data center will have a floor area of over 570,000 sq ft, and is equipped with a total power capacity of up to 36 megawatts – one of the highest in the region.