Large contract awarded in submarine cable project

A $737 million contract was awarded to a group of four companies—Alcatel Submarine Networks (Paris, France), AT&T Submarine Systems Inc. (Morristown, NJ), KDD Submarine Cable Systems (Tokyo, Japan), and Pirelli (Milan, Italy)—to supply the major part of the SEA-ME-WE 3 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe) fiberoptic network, expected to link more than 30 countries. The firms will supply 21,000 km of the 37,000-km cable system, as well as associated electronics. The network, with 25 landing points and 15 spurs or branches, will operate in the synchronous digital hierarchy at 2.5 Gbit/s. It will have a maximum transmission capacity of 40 Gbit/s, with four wavelengths on each of two fiber pairs. The $1.3 billion project is scheduled for completion by December 1998.