UAE-based telecom major, Etisalat, today said it has launched a high capacity fibre optic submarine cable that stretches from India to Europe, in collaboration with eight other global telecom players, including Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications.

The 13,000-km three pair fiber optic cable named IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe), has a design capacity of 3.84 terabits per second, connecting India to Italy and France via Middle East, with landings enroute in Pakistan, UAE, Saudi Arabia , Egypt and Lebanon, Etisalat said in a statement.

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), it added.

Etisalat Carrier and Wholesale Services Executive Vice-President Ali Amiri said the extra capacity and reliability provided by the IMEWE cable will not only delight customers across the region and bring great benefit to UAE as a whole but will also respond to substantial growth in capacity requirements due to surge in broadband demand witnessed by the region.

"Our participation in the IMEWE is an example of this vision taken from 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 ever growing bandwidth requirement of Indian sub-continent and Middle East to Europe and beyond.