Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) is a 25,000km submarine cable from South East Asia to Europe across Egypt, connecting Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia,Singapore, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France.

The AAE-1 cable system terminates at diversified carrier neutral data centers in major regional hubs, including Telecom House in Hong Kong, Equinix SG3 and Global Switch in Singapore, and InterXion MRS1 in Marseille, France, and connects Vietnam, Cambodia and Hong Kong via diverse terrestrial routes across Thailand. These unique features enable AAE-1 to deliver one of the lowest-latency routes between Hong Kong, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.

The AAE-1 cable system was initially designed with 100Gbps technology for a system capacity of more than 40 Tbps on 5 fiber pairs. 

The wet plant of AAE-1 cable system was supplied by SubCom for the segments from France to Thailan and NEC for the segments from Thailand to Hong Kong.

The AAE-1 consortium signed the construction and maintenance agreement in Hong Kong on January 27, 2014, and launched the AAE-1 cable system for commerical service in June 2017.

In 2020, AAE-1 consortium upgraded the SLTE with Infinera’s Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE4) technology.

In 2022, AAE-1 consortium upgraded the SLTE with Infinera’s Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE6) coherent 800G solution, to providing in excess of 100 Tbps.