Sea-Me-We 3 submarine cable suffers break

August 31, 2017
By Sara K. Madden

Vocus has confirmed a break in the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 3 (Sea-Me-We 3) submarine cable between Perth and Singapore. The Sea-Me-We 3 submarine cable is currently down, and until the link is restored, customers can expect to experience increased latency to Asian destinations, Vocus says.

The company did not detail the cause of the break, but stated in an incident summary that it hopes to complete repairs by October 13, although the date is subject to change due to the cable break's nature.

Sea-Me-We 3 went into service in 1999. Vocus is in the process of building what press reports suggest is a replacement cable system for the network, the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) submarine cable. Vocus announced last week that its ASC submarine cable system deployment is ahead of schedule, and a delivery is expected in July 2018 (see "Australia Singapore Cable deployment reportedly ahead of schedule").

The 4,600-km undersea ASC undersea cable network will link Singapore and Australia (specifically, Perth), landing in Jakarta and Christmas Island along the way. Vocus signed Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks in December to help build ASC, which is designed to carry 40 Tbps at a minimum across four fiber pairs (see "Vocus taps Alcatel Submarine Networks for Australia Singapore Cable submarine network").