Live
- India's economy has tripled in size over last decade
- Elon Musk launches 'America Party' enters U.S. political scenario
- 'Life-saving' app listing blood donors in Delhi soon: CM Rekha Gupta
- Govt says there's no directive to block Reuters X handle in India
- Lebanese president urges pressure on Israel to halt attacks on Lebanon
- Prince Masvaure misses second Test against South Africa due to respiratory tract infection
- BJP ally Tipra Motha Party to meet HM Shah over infiltration issue
- Punjab: SAD leader Majithia sent to judicial custody
- EC should conduct Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bengal: BJP's Suvendu
- BJP asks CM to apologise for linking COVID vaccines with heart attacks as expert panel rejects claim
Digital booster: Airtel lands 2Africa Pearls cable in India
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.
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.
