I-ME-WE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) is a submarine communications cable system linking Europe and India via the Middle East. At launch, the design capacity was 3.84 Tbit/s, but after upgrades by Mitsubishi Electric in 2016, the new design capacity was rated at 5.6 Tbit/s. The cable entered service in December 2010.
The cable consists of three fiber pairs, one of which is a terrestrial link connecting Alexandria and Suez in Egypt. The contract for construction and maintenance of the cable was awarded to Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN), supported by NEC as subcontractor, at a total cost of US$480 million.
The IMEWE consortium comprises nine telecom companies across eight countries.
Other cable systems following a substantially similar route are: