Airtel, a prominent player in India’s telecom sector, has recently achieved a significant milestone by landing the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable in Chennai. This move comes after its earlier success in Mumbai, marking a crucial step to bolster global connectivity. The SEA-ME-WE 6 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6, or SMW6) is an extensive 21,700 Rkm submarine cable system that links India with strategic locations like Singapore and France, crossing Egypt via terrestrial cables.
Responsible for this impressive extension was SubCom, a leader in subsea fiber optic technology, which was instrumental in the engineering, manufacturing, and deployment of the new system. This development aims to diversify Airtel’s global network capacity and enhance its service offerings internationally.
Sharat Sinha, Director & CEO at Airtel Business, expressed optimism about this achievement. “At Airtel we strive to provide the best in class services to our customers and this new investment and milestone would further improve our secure, diverse and scalable global network,” stated Sinha.
The integration of the cable into Airtel’s network reveals a strategy to enhance collective capacity and provide superior connectivity solutions to the Indian market. The cable landing in Chennai and Mumbai is set to coordinate with Nxtra by Airtel, their data center unit, to facilitate seamless access for global hyperscalers and local businesses.
Additionally, Airtel’s investment extends to a private network of four fiber pairs connecting Singapore, Chennai, and Mumbai. This network will introduce a remarkable 220 TBPs of global capacity to India, underlining Airtel’s commitment to stay ahead in a competitive telecom landscape.
Globally, Airtel has investments spread across five continents with 34 subsea cables, including recent projects like 2Africa, Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2), and Equiano. These initiatives not only link India to major regions such as APAC, Europe, the Middle East, and the US but also exhibit Airtel’s foresight in expanding its technological footprint.
