A consortium of nine leading global telecom players, including India's Tata Communications, has launched a new high capacity, state-of-the-art fibre-optic submarine cable between India and Europe via the Middle East, which will benefit broadband users along the route.

The three-pair fiber-optic cable, named IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe), has a design capacity of 3.84 terabits per second, and is the?most advanced cable connecting India in South Asia to Italy and France in Western Europe via the Middle East, traversing Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and? Lebanon along the way, a statement from UAE-based telecom giant Etisalat said.

The IMEWE consortium comprises of nine major telecom companies: Bharti Airtel (India), Etisalat (UAE), France Telecom-Orange (France), OGERO (Lebanon), Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (Pakistan), Saudi Telecom Company STC (Saudi Arabia), Telecom Egypt (Egypt), Telecom Italia Sparkle (Italy) and Tata Communications?(India).

Etisalat Executive Vice-President, Carrier and Wholesale Services, Ali Amiri said the extra capacity and reliability provided by the IMEWE cable will cater to the substantial growth in broadband demand from customers across the region and bring great benefit to the UAE as a whole.

"Our participation in the IMEWE is an example of this vision... and we expect to see great results in terms of both the performance of our network and an enhanced customer experience," he said.

IMEWE is the third major submarine cable operational between India and Europe after SMW3 and SMW4 and is expected to play a major role in meeting the requirement of the ever-growing Internet traffic between the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East, Europe and beyond.

The IMEWE system would also play a key role in expansion of broadband services in countries along the route. The IMEWE system will also play a major role in assuring continuity of services in case of technical problems in other existing major cables along the route.