Airtel completes SEA-ME-WE 6 cable landing in Chennai

Bharti Airtel has successfully completed the landing of the SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable in Chennai, following a prior landing in Mumbai, bolstering connectivity between India, Singapore, and France.

The SEA-ME-WE 6 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6) submarine cable system extends over 21,700 route kilometres and links India to global hubs in Singapore and France (Marseille) while traversing Egypt. The project was executed by SubCom, a company specialising in subsea fibre optic cable systems, who managed the engineering, manufacture, and installation phases of the cable.

Sharat Sinha, Director & CEO of Airtel Business, expressed contentment over this expansion, stating, "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. We are delighted to further strengthen our global connectivity by landing one of the largest cable systems into our facilities. This complements our existing network strength of 400,000 Rkms across 50 countries. This also underlines our commitment to address Digital India's growing demand for global connectivity & data with additional routes, diversity and capacity."

The integrated approach includes Airtel's data centre arm, Nxtra by Airtel, aligning with the company's large facilities in both Mumbai and Chennai. This strategic positioning is geared towards enabling global hyperscalers and businesses in India to access seamless international connectivity alongside robust data centre services.

As a member of the SEA-ME-WE-6 consortium, Airtel has invested in the cable's core infrastructure. Additionally, the company has co-developed a private network comprising four fibre pairs that interlink Singapore, Chennai, and Mumbai. The cable system promises to bring a substantial 220 terabits per second (TBPs) of global capacity into India.

Airtel's global network efforts span across five continents with investments in 34 subsea cables worldwide. Recent projects in this portfolio include 2Africa, the Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2), and the Equiano cable. Other key investments feature extensive infrastructure within the i2i Cable Network, Europe India Gateway, IMEWE, and SEA-ME-WE-4 among others, reinforcing connections to regions such as Asia-Pacific (APAC), Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.