Bharti announces launch of cable link between Japan & US

Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel today said a global consortium of which it is a part has launched an undersea cable between Japan and the west coast of the US, providing high-capacity bandwidth access across the Pacific.

Besides Bharti Airtel, the other partners of the Unity consortium includes Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corp, Pacnet and SingTel.

Construction of the 9,620 km submarine cable system was first announced in February 2008. The cable system was built at a cost of $300 million, Bharti said in a communication to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

"This is in line with our vision to offer multiple paths and create a robust undersea cable infrastructure for our customers. Unity cable system will provide enhanced and seamless global connectivity, as it is connected to other cable systems further enhancing connectivity to Asia," Bharti Airtel Executive Director-Enterprise Services Rajan Swaroop said.

Today's announcement comes within days of Bharti sealing a mega $10.7 billion deal to buy Kuwaiti telecom firm Zain's assets in 15 African countries that would make the Indian entity the world's fifth largest wireless company.

Bharti Airtel's investments in Unity, is a part of its plans to expand its global network through its ownership of 'i2i' submarine cable system and consortium ownership in other global undersea cable systems like SEA-ME-WE 4, EIG, I-ME-WE and AAG, the statement said.

Through the deployment of state-of-the-art submarine cable technology, the five fibre pair Unity cable system is designed to deliver up to 4.8 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific, with each fibre pair having a capacity of up to 960 Gigabits per second.