The Hindu Business Line : Bharti signs pact for new under-sea cable

New Delhi, Feb. 6 Bharti Airtel, along with eight major global telecommunications companies, has signed a formal agreement to build a high-capacity fibre-optic submarine cable that will connect India to France via West Asia. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd is also part of this consortium. The new cable comes even as Internet services in India and other countries in the region have been severely impacted due to three cable cuts during the last week. This will be the ninth under-sea cable touching Indian shores and will enable more bandwidth in the next 2 years.

The cable system, known as I-ME-WE (India, Middle East, Western Europe), will be operational by 2009 and is being designed to provide 3.84 terabits per second. The company declined to give information on the actual lit capacity to be available initially or details on investments. The other companies who are part of the consortium are Etisalat (UAE), France Telecom (France), Ogero (Lebanon), PTCL (Pakistan), STC (Saudi Arabia), TE (Egypt) and TIS Sparkle (Italy). Alcatel Lucent has been given the supply contract for the construction of the I-ME-WE submarine cable system.

For resilient networks

Mr David Nishball, President, Enterprise Services, Airtel, told Business Line, “This investment is in line with our strategy to extend our international footprint and focus on connecting our customers in India to the Middle East and Europe. While our existing i2i and SEA-ME-WE-4 cable systems already provide connectivity across the globe, the I-ME-WE cable system will help offer increased redundancy and resilient networks, while meeting the increasing demands of voice, private data and Internet traffic. “This partnership will also play a key role in our endeavour to provide alternate routes for meeting the bandwidth requirements of our customers at any given time.”

Bharti currently provides about 200 Gbps bandwidth through i2i and SEA-ME-WE-4 cables. Bharti will set up a new cable landing station in Mumbai for the latest venture.

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