Bharti Airtel has landed the new SEA-ME-WE 6 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6, or SMW6) in Chennai. The company had already landed the cable in Mumbai on December 30, 2024.
These 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 21,700 Rkm submarine cable system connects India to Singapore and France (Marseille) crossing Egypt through terrestrial cables. With this, Airtel has further enhanced its network presence with diversified capacity in the submarine cable system globally.
Commenting on the announcement, Sharat Sinha, director and chief executive officer, Airtel Business, said, “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 and data with additional routes, diversity, and capacity.”
The cable landing, both in Mumbai and Chennai, will be fully integrated with Airtel’s data centre arm, Nxtra by Airtel, at its large facilities in the respective cities with an aim to enable global hyperscalers and businesses in the country to seamlessly access international connectivity and data centre services.
As a key member of the consortium of the SEA-ME-WE-6 cable system, Airtel has investment in the core cable and has additionally co-built a private network of four Fibre Pairs between Singapore, Chennai and Mumbai. This cable system will bring around 220 TBPs of global capacity to India.
