Airtel, Singtel team up for data business in 325 cities globally

Singtel's 200 PoPs in 160 cities and Airtel's over 170 plus PoPs in 165 cities across Asia and Africa and will be part of new network

Singapore Telecommunications and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to deliver high-speed data network coverage across 325 cities in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle-East, Africa, Europe and the US under one network.

"This association will strongly enhance our value proposition for enterprise customers by offering them a wider global reach and the largest reach within India under a single platform," Bharti Airtel Director, Strategic Ventures Manish Prakash said in a statement.

This, in particular, will benefit companies in pharmaceutical, IT and IT-enabled services as well as financial segments, which are branching out to international locations rapidly, Prakash added.

This will form one of the largest Internet Protocol Virtual Private Networks (IP VPNs) globally, the statement said.

Singtel's 200 points of presence (PoPs) in 160 cities around the world and Airtel's over 170 plus PoPs in 165 cities across India, Africa and the Middle-East will be part of the new network.

"With its (Airtel) wide coverage of cities in India, this network paves the way for our international customers to enter into one of the world's most vibrant economies. Conversely, this partnership also opens the door to Indian companies to expand abroad," MD of Global Enterprise Business at Singtel Group Enterprise Lim Seng Kong said.

Under this global network, multinational corporations can maintain a track of their operations across different regions by using high-bandwidth business applications such as video conferencing, cloud applications, unified communications and the like.