Indian telecom service provider Bharti Airtel has landed the SEA-ME-WE 6 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6, or SMW6) submarine cable in Chennai, following an earlier landing in Mumbai on December 30, 2024. The cable landings were executed by SubCom, a subsea fiber optic solutions provider.
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SMW6 Submarine Cable System
The 21,700 Rkm SMW6 cable connects India with Singapore and France (Marseille), traversing Egypt via terrestrial routes. As a key consortium member, Airtel said it has invested in the core cable and co-built four private fiber pairs between Singapore, Chennai, and Mumbai. The SMW6 cable system adds 220 TBPs of global capacity to India's network.
The Director and CEO of Airtel Business said, "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."
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Integration with Nxtra Data Centers
"The cable landing, both in Mumbai and Chennai, will be fully integrated with Airtel's data centre arm, Nxtra by Airtel, at its facilities in the respective cities with an aim to enable global hyperscalers and businesses in India to seamlessly access international connectivity and data centre services," Airtel said on Monday.
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Enhancing India's Digital Connectivity
Airtel stated that its global network spans five continents, and its subsea investments include 34 global cable systems, such as 2Africa, and the Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2). Apart from these cables that connect India to key regions like APAC, Europe, the Middle East and the US, Airtel's global subsea network investments also include cable systems like i2i Cable Network (i2icn), Europe India Gateway (EIG), IMEWE, SEA-ME-WE-4, AAG, Unity, EASSy, Gulf Bridge International (GBI) and Middle East North Africa Submarine Cable (MENA Cable) among many others, the company highlighted.
