South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3 (Sea-Me-We3 or SMW3) is a submarine cable linking 39 cable landing stations in 33 countries and 4 continents, including Asia, Astralia, Africa and Europe. Sea-Me-We 3 (SMW3) is the longest submarine cable system in the world with a total length of 39,000 km.
Sea-Me-We 3 (SMW3) cable system was supplied by ASN and Fujitsu and officially put into service on September 30, 1999.
The SMW3 Consortium comprises 92 telecom operators.
Sea-Me-We 3 (SMW3) cable system consists of two fiber pairs in its trunk, designed with 8*STM-16 DWDM technology which was the then state-of-the-air technology when it was designed in 1996.
In 2006, 2nd 10G Upgrade was completed which increased Sea-Me-We-3 system capacity significantly.
In May 2007, Sea-Me-We-3 completed the 3rd 10G Upgrade with 48 wavelengths per fiber pair.
In December 2009, the 4th 10G Upgrade increased WDM channels from 48 to 64 per fibre pair.
In 2015, the 5th Upgrade realized capacity expansion with 100G DWDM technologies.
Sea-Me-We3 (SMW3) lands at the following 39 cable landing stations in 33 countries:
For the capacity pricing, Sea-Me-We 3 introduced an innovative Price Incentive Scheme based on the MIU*km concept. For each MIU (i.e. a 2 Mbit/s circuit) between two landing points, the price is equal to the geographical distance between these two points (subject to a minimum of 550 km and to a maximum of 10,000 km) multiplied by the unit cost for a MIU*km. For IRU purchase, the price will be at a Fixed Price of USD50 per miu*km for circuit within any segment in Sea-Me-We 3.