Bharti Airtel (Airtel) on Monday said that it has joined the SEA-ME-WE-6 undersea cable consortium to scale up its high-speed global network capacity to serve India’s fast growing digital economy.
The 19,200 Rkm SEA-ME-WE-6 will connect Singapore and France, and will be amongst the largest undersea cable systems globally, Airtel said in a statement.
New landing stations
Through SEA-ME-WE-6, Airtel will add 100 TBps capacity to its global network. Airtel has acquired one fiber pair on the main SEA-ME-WE-6 system and will co-build four fiber pairs between Singapore–Chennai–Mumbai as part of the cable system. Airtel will land the SEA-ME-WE-6 cable system in India at new landing stations in Mumbai and Chennai, it said.
SEA-ME-WE-6 will be fully integrated with Nxtra by Airtel’s large data centers in Mumbai and Chennai to enable global hyperscalers and businesses to access seamless integrated solutions and strengthen India’s position as an emerging data centre hub in the region.
Airtel is participating as a major investor in the SEA-ME-WE-6 and is anchoring 20 per cent of the overall investment in the cable system, which will go live in 2025. The 12 other consortium members of SEA-ME-WE-6 include Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Dhiraagu (Maldives), Djibouti Telecom, Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Orange (France), Singtel (Singapore), Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia and Telin (Indonesia).
“Undersea cable systems along with data centers are vital infrastructure for supporting 5G and the digital economy. Airtel has been ahead of the curve on this front and already operates the largest undersea cable network out of India in addition to the biggest network of data centres,” Ajay Chitkara, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Business said.
Airtel global network spans over 3,65,000 Rkms and reaches 50 countries across five continents. Nxtra by Airtel, the data centre unit of Airtel, operates the largest network of data centres in India with 11 large and 120 edge data centres.
Published on
February 21, 2022
