MARSEILLES/PARIS, 26 July 2005 — Alcatel has announced that two new international submarine cable networks, Sea-Me-We4 and Med Cable, were successfully landed in the city of Marseilles, France. This achievement strengthens Marseilles’ role as a key hub for international communications with Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The Sea-Me-We 4 submarine cable network, installed in 18 months, nearly spans 20,000 km — approximately half of the circumference of the globe — linking 14 countries from Singapore to France via Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Italy, and with 16 landing points. This system is designed to last 25 years with full reliability, and with 32 times the initial capacity of the previous Sea-Me-We 3 system, which was installed seven years ago. The network will meet the fast growing needs from India and Middle-Eastern countries.
The Med Cable network, deployed for Orascom, connects Marseilles to Algiers and Annaba in Algeria, spanning approximately 1,300 km. Further strengthening the connections between Algeria, the European and international networks, Med Cable is designed to enable future extensions toward the east and west of the Mediterranean basin.
Alcatel had the turnkey responsibility for the end-to-end realization of the two state-of-the-art networks now fully deployed, from design to laying. Alcatel awarded the landing operations — including the cable protection and the onshore landing — to Louis Dreyfus Travocean, a Marseilles-based company founded in 1977 and a subsidiary of Louis Dreyfus Armateurs. These operations were coordinated with the Marseilles local authorities to optimize the deployment.
Alcatel and the Sea-Me-We consortia have been cooperating since Sea-Me-We 1 and 2. This cooperation continued onward in 1997 when Sea-Me-We 3 was launched. Initially connecting Southeast Asia, Middle East and Western Europe, it links Far East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, South Asia, the Middle East, Southern, Western and Northern Europe. It crosses the Seven Seas, spanning approximately 40,000 km. The network gathers 92 telecommunications carriers along the route, such as France Telecom, Deutsche Telecom AG, Telecom Italia, OTE, Etisalat, China Telecom, SingTel, BT, KDD, Telecom Egypt and Saudi Telecom. Sea-Me-We is made up of the most complex network architecture of any undersea system in the world to date, with traffic connections between 39 landing points along the route.
The successful landing of Sea-Me-We 4 is certain to be well received by investors. Alcatel has just announced that for the second quarter of 2005 its earnings are better than expected. Alcatel’s preliminary Q2 2005 revenues are 3.14 billion euros, an increase of eight percent over the same period last year. This higher than expected revenue growth resulted from a strong momentum in IP routing and optical transmission, mobile communications and enterprise solutions.
Alcatel is working to push those revenues even higher by developing new markets and has just signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Etisalat, to accompany Etisalat in its worldwide expansion plans. Alcatel has become one of Etisalat’s strategic partners in order to pursue new fixed and mobile markets or business opportunities.
Alcatel and Etisalat will collaborate in the development of business cases, technical feasibility studies, tender submission, marketing and financing solutions linked to the supply and installation of Alcatel telecommunication equipment and the delivery of support services.
“This agreement is the logical evolution of the long lasting cooperation between our company and Etisalat in the development of telecommunications solutions in both the Emirates and Saudi Arabia,” said Olivier Picard, president of Alcatel France & MAI. “This experience can now be utilized internationally contributing to the healthy development of this partnership which will encompass all the latest technologies.”