Five international consortia have submitted bids for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to install the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable, the fourth phase of a high-capacity, fibre-optic cable linking South-East Asia with the Middle East and Western Europe. The clients are the national telecoms carriers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the governments of Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, France and Italy, as well as the US' MCI and Barti Telecom of India. The SEA-ME-WE network is expected to generate considerable project opportunities downstream as clients tender onshore links. In the Middle East, the cable will make landfall in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The companies leading the bidding consortia - Tyco and Lucent Technologies, both of the US, Japan's Fujitsu, Germany's Siemens and Alcatel of France - are preparing to attend a bidders meeting in Singapore in early October. This will be followed by a second meeting in Kuala Lumpur in November when the successful bidder is expected to be announced.
Procurement of the cable comprises the bulk of the estimated $750 million project costs. About 90 per cent of the financing has been pledged by client governments to date, with the remainder expected to come from Algeria, Tunisia and Thailand when they join the project in October.
www.meed.com/telecomsit
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