Reliance Jio, Vodafone join hands with other biggies

A consortium of global telecom service providers, including Reliance Jio Infocomm and Vodafone, today signed an agreement to construct and maintain a submarine telecom and data cable system connecting Southeast and South Asia to West Asia, as well as other regions.

Other members of the consortium include Telekom Malaysia Berhad, Oman’s Omantel, UAE’s Etisalat and Sri Lanka’s Dialog Axiata, according to a statement by Reliance Jio. Alcatel-Lucent has signed an agreement with the consortium to deploy the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) system, according to a statement by Alcatel-Lucent.

The 8,000-km BBG cable, to be operational by 2014-end, would link six countries through landing points in Barka (Oman), Fujairah (UAE), Mumbai and Chennai, Ratmalana (Sri Lanka), Penang (Malaysia) and Singapore. These markets are expected to see strong growth in broadband technologies and infrastructure expansion. (CONNECTING NATIONS)

According to the Reliance Jio statement, the BBG system would also provide connectivity to Europe, Africa and the Far East, through interconnections with other existing and new cable system landing points in India, West Asia and the Far East.

The BBG cable system is designed to provide transmission facilities by adopting state-of-the-art 100-giga-bytes-per-second technology. The Reliance Jio statement said the cable system would serve as an opportunity for business growth, as it would help support high-capacity requirements from surrounding areas.

Last week, Reliance Jio had signed an agreement with Bharti Airtel to use the company’s 3,100-km submarine cable i2i, which connects India to Singapore.

According to the agreement, Reliance would use one of the eight fibre pairs in the cable, which has a capacity of 8.4 terra bits per second.

The cable would provide Reliance “direct access and ultra-fast connectivity to major hubs across Asia-Pacific” and help the “operator to meet the bandwidth demand and provide ultra-fast data experience to its customers”, Reliance had said in a joint statement last week.