South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) is an optical fibre submarine communications cable system that carries telecommunications between Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France. About 18,800 kilometres long, the cable provides the primary Internet backbone between South East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, and Europe.
Network topology The SEA-ME-WE 4 system is divided into four segments with sixteen landing points:
Segments
Landing points
History The SEA-ME-WE 4 cable system was developed by a consortium of 16 telecommunications companies under a deal signed on 27 March 2004. It was built by Alcatel Submarine Networks (now a division of Alcatel-Lucent) and Fujitsu. The 18-month construction project was completed on 13 December 2005 at an estimated cost of US$500 million. Fujitsu built segment 1, which runs 8,000 kilometres from Singapore to India, and provided the submarine repeater equipment for Segment 4.
Outages
30 January 2008
On 30 January 2008, Internet services were widely disrupted in the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent following damage to the SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG Telecom cables in the Mediterranean Sea. Disruptions of 70 percent in Egypt, and 60 percent in India were reported along with problems in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. In India, small users felt the impact while ISPs could service large users who have more lucrative contracts. While the respective contributions of the two cable systems to this blackout is unclear, network outage graphs show anomalies at 04:30 UTC and again at 08:00 UTC. The FALCON submarine communications cable was reported severed off the coast of Dubai in the Persian Gulf on 1 February 2008, making it the third over a two-day period. Though the cause of the damage to SEA-ME-WE 4 or FLAG has not been declared by either cable operator and 12 hours of video before and after the incident show no ships being in the area, a number of sources speculate these were caused by a ship's anchor near Alexandria, while the Kuwait government attributes the breaks to "weather conditions and maritime traffic". The New York Times reported that the damage occurred to the two systems separately near Alexandria and Marseilles. The water near Alexandria is restricted and Egypt knew of "no passing ships" at the time. For a number of days, SEA-ME-WE 3 was the only remaining cable connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt. Data transmission capacity between India and Europe was reduced by 75 percent, causing much of the traffic between these sites to be rerouted through the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
19 December 2008 On 19 December 2008, the cable was again severed, simultaneously with SEA-ME-WE 3, the FLAG FEA cable, and the GO-1 cable. It was expected to be operating again by 25 December.
14 April 2010 shunt fault On 14 April 2010 the cable had a shunt fault approximately 1,886 kilometers from Alexandria towards Palermo, Italy, on the segment between Alexandria and Marseille.
May 2010 fault Another cable fault, disrupting the connection between Malaysia, Mumbai and Europe.
5 July 2010 Services between Mumbai and Mombasa were down from 9:19 GMT/5 July 2010. Services in South Africa, all regions was also experienced and rerouting was experienced. On Mweb's website it was listed as ADSL Outage number 8084.
11 May 2012 fault The submarine cable South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SeaMeWe-4) was reportedly cut near Alexandria, disrupting internet services in Pakistan. Reportedly SMW4 was cut in April 2012 too, but was restored on the same day.
6 June 2012 fault On this day, at around 18:30 (GMT+8), Sea-Me-We 4 had a cut near Singapore causing disruption to voice and internet services from Singapore and Malaysia to Bangladesh. Service disruption affected the eastern route into Bangladesh while western one is not affected.
27 March 2013 fault A cut in the segment 4 of South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) submarine optical fiber cable on Wednesday morning (27 March 2013) has been reported leading to a degradation of internet speed by 60% in several countries including Pakistan and Egypt. A consortium of SEA-ME-WE-4 Cable System is working on the fault but they have not come up with a resolution time for this problem and confirmed nature of fault is yet to be determined Three men were arrested for trying to cut the cable near Alexandria. The issue was resolved on the 8 April 2013.
25–28 December 2013 fault Fiber cut in SMW4 segment 3 (Egypt terrestrial path). Slow internet speeds throughout Pakistan according to a tweet from a Pakistan telecom engineer.
20 November - 18 December 2014 fault Fiber had a fault, according to a news article. Unconfirmed reports claim that it was repaired on 18 December, although its effects were still being observed for at least several days more.
19 January 2015 fault According to news articles, this fiber had a technical issue. These reports claimed that this would be repaired within a week.
22 October 2015 fault Fiber cut in SMW4 (Algeria Path), according to a news article. "The internet access will be disrupted for several days in Algeria following a cut on a submarine cable linking Annaba (600 km east of Algiers) to Marseille ( south -eastern France), announced Thursday, October 22 Algeria Telecom in a statement". Unconfirmed reports on when it was due to be repaired, its effects were still being observed until 26 October.
13-15 April 2017 fault Fiber damaged in SMW4 (Algeria Path), according to a news article. "The internet access will be disrupted for several hours from Friday at 01:00 to 18:00 in Algeria following a cut on a submarine cable linking Annaba (600 km east of Algiers) to Marseille (south -eastern France). The damage caused to the landing chamber caused by the bad weather recorded on the coast of Annaba on 6 March 2016, Algeria Telecom Initiated several actions aimed at securing and protecting these installations ... ", explained the same source announced 3 days before, 12 April Algeria Telecom in a statement. These reports claimed that this would be repaired within two days. However, another report explained that the cable was still being repaired on 15 April due to some technical complications.
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