Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) has signed a new turnkey contract with a consortium that is comprised of nine operators to install a new submarine cable network that connects Mumbai in India to Marseilles in France, over a distance of nearly 13,000 km.

The new submarine cable network is named India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE). It will address the requirements along the India-Western Europe route for better backhaul communication capabilities. Additionally, the network will offer enhanced capacity for high-bandwidth broadband services. To supplement the network, Alcatel-Lucent will also install a terrestrial link in Egypt to interlink the cities of Alexandria and Suez.

“IMEWE reflects the need for enhanced capacity, connectivity and diversity to best meet the end-users’ demands,” Mr. K.P. Tiwari, Chairman of the consortium’s Management Committee commented. “With its field-proven experience in network deployment and project management, Alcatel-Lucent is a trusted partner to facilitate regional and international connectivity.”

“We are pleased to support Alcatel-Lucent in this project enhancing the cooperation among our companies that has already proven effective in similar large submarine systems,” Osamu Harada, General Manager of Submarine Network Division at NEC (News - Alert) Corporation, also said. “In such major system our cooperation grants the Purchasers the high reliability and security for timely delivery.”

The nine parties that make the consortium are Bharti, Etisalat, France Telecom, Ogero Telecom, PTCL, STC, Telecom Egypt, Telecom Italia Sparkle and VSNL (News - Alert). The IMEWE network is scheduled to be completed in the last quarter of 2009. It will address the global traffic growth, which is attributed to the widespread adoption of peer-to-peer IP-based services that include video applications, broadband Internet, downloading, voice and video calling.

With Internet users increasingly needing high bandwidth for a better Internet experience, the need to deploy transoceanic communication networks that can sustain these demands, has become a must. The IMEWE has a minimum design capacity of 3.84 Terabit/s - 128 x 10Gbit/s on three fiber pairs and will consist of two trunk cables that link India to France through Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and Italy. There will be ten landing points for the cable network along the route. These include two in Mumbai, and one each in Karachi, Fujairah, Jeddah, Suez, Alexandria, Tripoli Catania and Marseilles. The turnkey system will be developed in collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent’s subcontractor NEC. The latter will deploy its wet plant from Mumbai to Jeddah for the network.