Digital booster: Airtel lands 2Africa Pearls cable in India
Digital booster: Airtel lands 2Africa Pearls cable in India
Bharti Airtel on Thursday said it has successfully landed the 2Africa Pearls cable in the country, connecting India to Africa, and Europe via the Middle East.
NEW DELHI — In a
boost to India’s digital growth ambitions, Bharti Airtel on Thursday said it
has successfully landed the 2Africa Pearls cable in the country, connecting
India to Africa, and Europe via the Middle East.
2Africa Pearls brings over 100 tbps (terabits per second) of
international capacity to India. With this investment, Airtel has further
diversified its global network to support India’s digital growth ambitions.
“We are thrilled to bring the 2Africa Pearls cable to India
adding to our network resilience. We are aggressively diversifying our global
network and recently landed the SEA-WE-ME-6 cable in Chennai and Mumbai,” said
Sharat Sinha, Director and CEO–Airtel Business.
“We will continue investing in global cable systems and
future-proof our network with an aim to deliver high uptime, reliability, and
superior quality network to our customers,” he added.
Airtel is the landing partner for the 2Africa Pearls cable
in India. This is in partnership with the 2Africa Pearls’ investors -- center3
and Meta.
2Africa Pearls is a part of the 2Africa cable system, which
will be the world's longest subsea cable system when completed, spanning over
45,000 kms connecting Asia to Africa and Europe through the Middle East.
Airtel’s global network spans 400,000 Rkms (route kms)
across 50 countries and five continents.
The company has investments in 34 cables globally with some
of the recent ones including 2Africa, Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2) and
Equiano.
Apart from these cables that connect India to key regions
like APAC, Europe, the Middle East and US, Airtel’s global subsea network
investments also include large cable systems like i2i Cable Network (i2icn),
Europe India Gateway (EIG), IMEWE, SEA-ME-WE-4, AAG, Unity, EASSy, Gulf Bridge
International (GBI) and Middle East North Africa Submarine Cable (MENA Cable),
among many others.
India already plays a key role in the global subsea cable
network, with around 17 international subsea cables connected to 14 landing
stations across Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin, Tuticorin and Trivandrum.
Indian telecom giants such as Tata Communications, Bharti
Airtel, Global Cloud eXchange and BSNL operate these critical infrastructures.
Recently, Bharti Airtel landed the SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine
cable in Chennai, strengthening its international connectivity.
Global tech giant Meta has also announced 'Project
Waterworth,' a 50,000 km undersea cable initiative connecting India with the
US, Brazil, and South Africa, reinforcing the country’s growing importance in
global digital networks.
