SEA-ME-WE 4

Schematic diagram of the SEA-ME -WE -4 course

SEA- ME- WE 4 or South - East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 4 is a submarine cable that Europe and Asia together. It was commissioned in December 2007.

The design is mainly as a submarine cable with a short land route in Egypt. To increase capacity, and to improve signal quality Wavelength Division Multiplexing is used.

Topography

The cable has 17 landing points in 15 countries on two continents and is divided into 4 segments:

Segments

Landing points

Operating company

Intelligence surveillance

In August 2013 the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that is led by the British intelligence agency GCHQ has succeeded with the support of the National Security Agency access to the cable system. The newspaper quotes Edward Snowden as the source of this information. According to the news magazine Der Spiegel, it is the U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA) also managed to obtain information about the network management of Seekabelsytems.