Undersea cabling
Singapore Telecom USA, Westport, CT, has announced that the SEA-ME-WE 2 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe) undersea fiber-optic cabling system is now operational (see Lightwave, September 1994, page 8). Operating at 565 megabits per second per optical fiber pair, the cable spans from Singapore to Marseilles, France, and links almost 2 billion people in 13 countries. SEA-ME-WE 2 is the first fiber-optic submarine cable to cross the Indian Ocean and provide the Indian sub-continent with international digital communications. The cable also forms a bridge between fiber-optic cables in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.