07 April 2022

Indian giant Bharti Airtel has joined the SEA-ME-WE-6 undersea cable consortium, participating as a major investor.

The company said it is participating as a “major investor” in the SEA-ME-WE-6 and is anchoring 20% of the overall investment in the cable system, which will go live in 2025.

It added that it had joined the ‘SEA-ME-WE-6’ consortium to scale up its high-speed global network capacity to serve India’s fast-growing digital economy.

Other consortium members of SEA-ME-WE-6, of which there are 12, 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).

In terms of reach, the 19,200 Rkm (route kilometres) SEA-ME-WE-6 will connect Singapore and France and will be among the largest undersea cable system globally.

“Through SEA-ME-WE-6, Airtel will add a significant amount of 100 TBps capacity to its global network,” the statement said.

Airtel has acquired one fibre pair on the main SEA-ME-WE-6 system and will co-build four fibre 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.