Bharti Airtel enters SEA-ME-WE-6 undersea cable consortium

21 Feb 2022 , 11:11 AM

Bharti Airtel Limited (Airtel), an Indian multinational telecommunications services company, announced that the company 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 link Singapore and France and will be amongst the largest undersea cable systems globally. Airtel will be the major investor in the SEA-ME-WE-6 and is putting ahead 20% of the overall investment in the cable system, which is anticipated to go LIVE in 2025.

The 12 other consortium members of SEA-ME-WE-6 include Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Dhiraagu (Maldives), Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Telecom Egypt, Orange (France), Djibouti Telecom, Singtel (Singapore), Sri Lanka Telecom, Telekom Malaysia, Telin (Indonesia).

“Undersea cable systems along with data centers are key infrastructure for supporting 5G and the India’s emerging digital economy. Airtel already operates the largest undersea cable network out of India in addition, to the biggest network of data centers. This investment in SEA-ME-WE-6 is step ahead in our journey to future-proof our network and build large integrated capacities to enable India’s digital ecosystem,” commented Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, Airtel Business.

Through SEA-ME-WE-6 Airtel will be able to expand its global network capacity by 100 TBps. Airtel has agreed to acquire one Fiber Pair on the main SEA-ME-WE-6 system and will leverage its resources to co-build four Fiber Pairs between Singapore — Chennai — Mumbai as part of the cable system. Airtel looks forward to land the SEA-ME-WE6 cable system in India at new landing stations in Mumbai and Chennai.

Bharti Airtel is currently trading at Rs713.30 up by Rs0.6 or 0.08% from its previous closing of Rs712.70 on the BSE. The scrip opened at Rs706 and has touched an intraday high and low of Rs714.60 and Rs702.75 respectively.