The SEA-ME-WE 5 (SMW5) is a 20,000km submarine cable system connecting 17 countries through Points-of-Presence (POPs) from Singapore to the Middle East to France and Italy in Western Europe, with an initial system design capacity of 24 Tbps over 3 fiber pairs.

The SEA-ME-WE 5 consortium consists of 15 leading telecom operators, including BSCCL, China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, China Unicom, Du, Orange, Myanmar Post and Telecom, Telin, Saudi Telecom, SingTel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telekom Malaysia, Telecom Italia Sparkle, TOT, and Telecom Yemen. The SMW5 consortium signed the construction and maintenace agreement on March 7, 2014.

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC were awarded the SMW5 supply contracts, Alcatel-Lucent supplied the segments from Sri Lanka to France, while NEC supplied the Singapore to Sri Lanka segment.

The SMW5 cable system was ready for service on December 13, 2016.

In August 2019, the SMW5 cable system completed an ungrade with Ciena's coherent 200G DWDM technology, increasing SMW5 system design capacity to 38Tbps.