IMEWE Submarine Cable Consortium awards contract for the project

A consortium of nine leading international telcos have signed the Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA) and the Supply Contract for a high-capacity fiber-optic submarine cable system that stretches from Mumbai, India to Catania, Italy and Marseille France via Gulf and Middle East. IMEWE - India, Middle East, Western Europe - the three fibre pair, new generation submarine cable system shall have minimum design capacity of 3.84 terabits per second and cover a distance of approximately 13,000 kilometers. This cable system, to be available for commercial service by 4th quarter 2009, shall match the ever growing capacity requirements between Asia, Middle East and Europe besides matching capacity requirements of North America to these regions as well.

The Agreement and the Supply Contract were signed by the nine (9) Consortium Parties on 5th Feb 2008 at historical Palazzo Rospigliosi in Rome, Italy, and was attended by representatives of consortium parties, contractors and media. The supply contract for this prestigious project has been awarded to Alcatel-Lucent.

The nine companies that form the consortium include Bharti Airtel (India), Etisalat (UAE), France Telecom (France), OGERO (Lebanon), PTCL (Pakistan), STC (Saudi Arabia), Telecom Egypt (Egypt), Telecom Italia Sparkle (Italy) and VSNL (India).

The Chairman of the Management Committee of the IMEWE Consortium, Mr. K P Tiwari, expressed his deep appreciation to all involved parties for their devotion, commitment, and untiring effort over the past year and a half in effectively addressing various challenges and making this project a reality and success. He added: "We, as a IMEWE consortium, are very pleased to contribute towards the development of the global telecommunications infrastructure that plays vital role in today's economy and well being of human kind".

Mr. Rajan Swaroop, Executive Director - Global Network Services, Bharti Airtel said, 'Our partnership in IMEWE cable system reinforces our commitment to invest in state of the art technologies for providing scalable and future proof solutions for our International customers. This investment is in line with our strategy to extend our International footprint and focus on connecting our customers in India to the Middle East and Europe. The IMEWE cable system will help offer increased diversity and resilient network to our existing i2i and SEAMEWE4 cable systems, while meeting the increasing demands of voice, private data and Internet traffic."

Mr Ali Amiri, Executive Vice President - Carrier and Wholesale Services, Etisalat, and Vice Chairman of IMEWE Management Committee said, "We are extremely pleased to announce commencement of 'Start to Deliver ' another important international multi-tera bit connectivity by signing this contract . Being a key initial player together with this elite group of international telcos , Etisalat is proud to consider this as an significant achievement, at par with the tremendous growth and development witnessed by the region in general and UAE in particular, a goal which Etisalat has always endeavored to fulfill. He further added "This project emphasizes Etisalat commitment to work with international peers to develop solutions that meet the highly demanding requirements of the global telecommunication industry which will bring tremendous benefits to all the customers in all the regions connected. Today I would therefore like to congratulate all the parties on their fruitful efforts in making this happen."

Dr Abdul Youssef Chairman and Director General of OGERO stated that OGERO which is the foundation of Liban Telecom (Full Multiservice National Operator of Lebanon) is aiming, through its participation in the IMEWE, at drastically enhancing the international connectivity of Lebanon. IMEWE cable will help OGERO to address the international bandwidth capacity growth requirements due to the Lebanese emergent broadband data services market and the opening up of this market to the local private sector. These strategic enhancements, including the long term partnership with the group of distinguished telecommunications Operators in the IMEWE Consortium, go hand in hand with the national deployment of some huge core telecommunications infrastructure allowing OGERO, and subsequently Liban Telecom, to assume the role of a powerful Regional Telecommunications Services Operator and transforming Lebanon into a remarkable Regional Telecommunications Hub.. Mr. Sher Bahadar Khan Executive Vice President. of PTCL (Pakistan), stated that this project is an important addition to cater for the ever growing capacity requirements to middle east and the western countries of Pakistan in general and PTCL in particular. This project will also play a pivotal role in providing effective resilience to the existing cable systems (SMW3 & SMW4) available with PTCL to provide flawless communication to its esteemed customers within & outside Pakistan. The success of this project is, of course, the result of hard and team work of the consortium Parties to achieve the objective. Mr. Sa'ad Demyati Vice President of STC, Saudi Arabia stated that STC has played a leadership role and remains at the forefront in ensuring that the Kingdom's requirements for international capacity are adequately addressed. He commented, "The Kingdom is facing a significant growth due to market acceptance of high-speed internet and other data services and the IMEWE cable system will certainly help address STC's longer-term requirements for additional capacity and improved diversity". Mr. Demyati concluded by commending the successful teamwork of all the consortium parties towards making this stage of the project a success.

Mr. Mohamed Elnawawy VP International, Wholesale and Regulatory Affairs of Telecom Egypt (Egypt) said "The IMEWE cable system is a customer oriented project that shall address the growing traffic demand along IMEWE route. IMEWE also further establishes the Telecom Egypt long standing tradition as the partner of Asia-Europe submarine cable systems for which Telecom Egypt offers Red Sea to Mediterranean Sea connectivity via Telecom Egypt's relevant resilient infrastructure".

Mr. Stefano Mazzitelli, CEO of Telecom Italia Sparkle (Italy) stated "We, at Telecom Italia Sparkle, consider this project highly strategic. It reaffirms Med basin as the key area of all transit streams from India, the Gulf and the Middle East to Europe, while strengthening Italy as a fundamental gateway in the whole region. This state-of-the-art fiber optic submarine cable - one of the largest telecommunications infrastructure ever designed - will reduce the geographical distance between Asia and Europe, making available improved Internet connectivity to some of the fastest growing economies in the world".

Mr Vinod Kumar, President, Global Data Solutions, VSNL (India) said, "Our participation in IMEWE reaffirms our commitment to customers in this region as we are already partners in the SMW-3 and SMW-4 consortium cable systems. We are proud to be part of such a project which will offer best in class services."

"Our commitment is to deliver the most advanced submarine technology to help our customers meet the continued growth of broadband adoption rates with the highest quality," stated Etienne Lafougère, President of Alcatel-Lucent's submarine network activity. "This new contract confirms the reliability of our submarine solutions as well as our end-to-end ability to provide every part of a global transport network."