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Bharti Airtel has announced that it has landed the Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6 (SEA-ME-WE 6) submarine cable in Chennai. The 21,700 Rkm submarine cable will connect India to Singapore and France (Marseille) via Egypt, strengthening India’s global connectivity.
Airtel had earlier landed the cable in Mumbai on 30 December 2024. The cable landings were completed by SubCom, a supplier of subsea fibre optic cable data systems responsible for the engineering, manufacture and installation of SEA-ME-WE-6.
The company stated in a press release that the infrastructure in Mumbai and Chennai will be fully integrated with Airtel’s data centre arm, Nxtra by Airtel, at its facilities in the two cities. This will enable global hyperscalers and businesses in India to access international connectivity and data centre services seamlessly.
“This complements our existing network strength of 400,000 Rkms across 50 countries,” said Sharat Sinha, Director and CEO – Airtel Business, adding that the initiative underlines the company’s commitment to address Digital India’s growing demand for global connectivity and data with additional routes, diversity and capacity.
Airtel’s Investments and Global Network
As a key member of the SEA-ME-WE-6 cable system consortium, Airtel has invested in the core cable and has co-developed a private network of four fibre pairs between Singapore, Chennai and Mumbai. The cable system will provide India with 220 TBPs of global capacity.
Overall, Airtel’s global network spans five continents and includes investments in 34 submarine cable systems, including 2Africa, Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2), and Equiano.
Other than cables connecting India to key regions like APAC, Europe, the Middle East, and the US, the company’s global subsea network investments also include large cable systems like i2i Cable Network, Europe India Gateway, IMEWE, SEA-ME-WE-4, AAG, Unity, EASSy, Gulf Bridge International, and Middle East North Africa Submarine Cable or MENA Cable.