There is plenty of action in the realm of submarine cable networks, which are used to connect several countries for flow of internet and telecom services.
On the one hand, you have telecom major Bharti Airtel joining 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.
On the other, Airtel's archrival, Jio (Reliance Jio Infocomm), which is already constructing the largest international submarine cable systems centred on India, said it will land the next generation multi-terabit India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) undersea cable system in Hulhumale, Maldives.
The Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6) subsea cable system, in which Airtel is a part, linking multiple countries between Singapore and France (via India) at high speed and low latency is being built from today.
The two submarine cable systems that Jio handles will connect India with Asia Pacific markets (The India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) system) through Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, and the other one (India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) system) with Italy, middle and north Africa region.
- Google is running a new undersea web cable between the US and South America
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Airtel to put in 20% of new cable system cost
The 19,200 Rkm SEA-ME-WE-6 will be among the largest undersea cable systems globally, and Airtel is anchoring 20% of the overall investment in the cable system, which will go live in 2025, a press release from the company said.
The new system is being built by a consortium of companies, which include --- aside from Airtel --- Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Dhiraagu (Maldives), Djibouti Telecom, Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Orange (France), Singtel (Singapore), Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia, Telin (Indonesia), and Trans World Associates (Pakistan).
The 19,200 km-long cable laid under the sea promises to connect the three regions at speeds of up to 100TB per second, or the equivalent of 40,000 high-definition videos each second.
"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," the company said.
SEA-ME-WE-6 will be fully integrated with Nxtra by Airtel’s large Data Centers in Mumbai and Chennai. Nxtra is the data center unit of Airtel, and operates the largest network of data centers in India with 11 large and 120 edge data centers.
Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, Airtel Business said: “Undersea cable systems along with data centers are vital infrastructure for supporting 5G and the digital economy."
Airtel global network spans over 365,000 Rkms and reaches 50 countries across five continents.
Jio’s IAX Project to land in the Maldives
Meanwhile, Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio) will land the next generation multi-terabit India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) undersea cable system in Hulhumale, Maldives.
The high capacity and high-speed IAX system will connect Hulhumale’ directly with World’s major internet hubs in India and Singapore.
“Today’s global economy is driven by low-latency broadband, connecting people, businesses, content, and services. IAX will not only connect Maldives to the world’s content hubs, but it will also support the explosive growth in data demand,” said Mathew Oommen, President, Reliance Jio.
The IAX system originates in Mumbai in the west and connects directly to Singapore, with branches including additional landings in India, Malaysia, and Thailand.
The India Europe-Xpress (IEX) system connects Mumbai to Milan, landing in Savona, Italy, and includes additional landings in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean.
IAX is expected to be ready for service end-2023, while IEX will be ready for service in mid-2024.
These high capacity and high-speed systems will provide more than 200Tb/s of capacity at speeds of 100Gb/s, over 16,000 kilometers. IEX and IAX together will be one of the most important developments in telecommunications infrastructure, linking India, Europe to Southeast Asia, and now the Maldives.
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