Airtel lands India's 20th undersea cable to connect with Africa, Europe

System is part of 45,000 km-long '2Africa', which will be the world's longest cable once completed

Bharti Airtel on Monday announced landing in Mumbai a subsea cable that will connect India to Africa and Europe via West Asia. It is part of the 2Africa system, which will be the world's longest subsea cable system when completed, spanning over 45,000 km.

 

The 2Africa Pearls that Airtel announced is India’s 20th undersea cable and it will have a data transfer rate of 100 terabits per second (Tbps). Airtel has partnered with Meta, the social media giant, and center3, a subsidiary of the Saudi Telecommunications Company, for laying the cable.

 

A month ago Airtel had announced the landing of the 21,700 km-long SEA-ME-WE 6 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6, or SMW6) optical fibre communications cable in Chennai. It connects India to Singapore and Marseilles in France and has 220 Tbps of global capacity.

 

2Africa Pearls is expected to help businesses to “seamlessly access” international connectivity and data centre services, said Airtel. Earlier cables have been integrated with the company’s data centre arm, Nxtra by Airtel, at its facilities.

 

The company said it is “aggressively diversifying” its global cable network of 400,000 Rkms (route km) in 50 countries and five continents. "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,” said Sharat Sinha, director & chief executive officer of Airtel Business.

 

Undersea cables are the backbone of global telecommunications, carrying approximately 99 percent of internet traffic and supporting services such as commerce, finance, government operations, digital health, and education. As of 2024, there were more than 500 active cable systems that transmitted vast amounts of data. While India is the largest data-generating nation and hosts more than 152 data centres, it was fed by mere 18 undersea cables till last year.

 

The telecom industry faces hurdles in repairing cables as damages from fishing vessels are increasing, said Bharti Airtel's Chief Regulatory Officer Rahul Vatts earlier this week. "The approval needed to get a repair ship to India takes six months. It requires officials from the Department of Telecommunications to be present on the ship when maintenance is going on," he said.

 

The industry has to report if cable repairs are within or outside India's Economic Zone – a task that creates confusion and escalates costs, he said. He suggested that the government reduce the license fees for cable landing systems and give tax incentives on imports.

 

Airtel has investments in 34 cables globally with some of the recent ones including Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 and Equiano. Its network investments include large cable systems like i2i Cable Network, Europe India Gateway, IMEWE, SEA-ME-WE-4, AAG, Unity, EASSy, Gulf Bridge International, and Middle East North Africa Submarine Cable.