January 20, 2010

India-Middle East-Western Europe (I-ME-WE) cable is a 13,000 km submarine project connecting Mumbai, India to Marseille in France through the Middle East and Italy. Alcatel-Lucent is the vendor for the three optical fiber submarine cable pairs and the project is slated to full commercial activity by March 2010.

The 13,000 km I-ME-WE submarine cable project aims to connect Mumbai in India to Marseille in France through Pakistan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and Italy. A consortium of nine telecommunications operators from the eight involved countries, have signed the Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA). The project is completely funded by I-ME-WE consortium which includes Bharti Airtel, Etisalat, France Telecom, Ogero Telecom, PTCL, STC, Telecom Egypt, Telecom Italia Sparkle and VSNL.

Exhibit 1: I-ME-WE Consortium

Company	Country
Bharti Airtel	India
Etisalat	UAE
France Telecom	France
Ogero	Lebanon
PTCL	Pakistan
STC	Saudi Arabia
Telecom Egypt	Egypt
Telecom Italia Sparkle	Italy
VSNL	India

As demand for bandwidth increased –driven by liberalization and increased adoption of broadband Internet services- the I-ME-WE project avails new capacity on transoceanic communication networks. With a

minimum design capacity of 3.84 Terabit/s - 128 x 10Gbit/s on three fiber pairs, IMEWE is composed of two trunk cables and have ten landing points located in Mumbai (two), Karachi, Fujairah, Jeddah, Suez, Alexandria, Tripoli, Catania and Marseilles. Exhibit 2 below lists these landing stations.

Exhibit 2: I-ME-WE landing stations

Region	Country
Mumbai (Two landing sites)	India
Karachi	Pakistan
Fujairah	UAE
Jeddah	Saudi Arabia
Suez	Egypt
Alexandria	Egypt
Tripoli	Lebanon
Catania	Italy
Marseille	France

In the first quarter of 2008, I-ME-WE consortium awarded Alcatel-Lucent the vendor contract to deploy the submarine cable. The vendor was supported by its subcontractor

NEC to provide and install the wet plant from Mumbai to Jeddah. According to the consortium parties, I-ME-WE submarine cable will be commercial by March 2010.

Consortium Parties	9
Fiber optic cables	3
Trunks	2
Length	13,000 km
Design Capacity	3.83 Terabit\s
Landing Stations	10 in 8 countries
Vendors	Alcatel-Lucent, NEC (subcontractor)