Bharti Airtel and Gulf Bridge International (GBI), a cloud provider for the West Asia and Europe, on Tuesday have agreed to unlock the capacity on GBI’s India-West Asia-Europe submarine cable system.
Under the agreement, Airtel will acquire the ownership of the India leg of GBI’s India-West Asia-Europe submarine cable. Airtel will also pick up a significant capacity on West Asia-Europe leg of GBI’s cable system, the company said.
Airtel and GBI have also agreed to formulate joint 'Go to Market' strategies and leverage the footprint of their respective global networks to serve global customers.
“With this, we are adding a large capacity to meet the growing data, content demand in markets like India as well as serve the connectivity needs of global carriers and enterprise customers. The agreement offers great synergies to Airtel and GBI as both partners will able to build on each other’s strengths in their respective markets,” Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO for Global Voice and Data Business, Airtel said.
This will also complement Airtel’s existing global network spanning 2,50,000 Rkms (of networking cable) with presence in 50 countries and contribute to the company’s vision of serving customers with a future ready network that is built on cutting-edge technology, he said.
With this new investment, Airtel has further consolidated its leading position as a global capacity provider. It now has large capacities, owned and leased, on multiple international submarine cable systems and offers the maximum number of routes between India and Europe, the company said.
GBI’s cable asset will complement Airtel’s existing global network viz. IMEWE, EIG, SMW4 and MENA and add significant long term bandwidth capacity, enabling it to serve the booming data demand across emerging markets like India and Africa, it said.
GBI is a multilayer terrestrial and subsea cable meshed network bridges the East to the West through the West Asia, empowers businesses, connects societies and contributes to the region’s transformation towards knowledge-based economies.
“We are committed to build a sustainable network in partnership with global leaders, with an ultimate goal to offer the best user experience to our partners and end-users. In line with this objective, today, we are excited to onboard Airtel and together deliver greater value to customers,” Abdulla Al Rwaili, Executive Vice Chairman and Managing Director, GBI, said.