Bharti Airtel has landed the 2Africa Pearls cable, connecting India to Africa, at its Mumbai cable landing station.
At 45,000km, it is the world’s largest subsea cable network and will connect 33 countries with 46 landing points in Europe and Asia.
First announced in 2020, the consortium behind the cable comprises eight partners: China Mobile International, Baobab, center3, Meta, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, and WIOCC.
An extension to the original 2Africa cable, known as 2Africa Pearls, was announced in 2021, with plans for further landing points in Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, India, and Saudi Arabia.
Airtel was confirmed as the landing partner for the Indian branch in 2022.
The cable brings more than 100Tbps of capacity to India, with Airtel adding that the landing has allowed the company to diversify its global network for India’s future digital growth ambitions.
Sharat Sinha, director and CEO of Airtel Business, said: “We are thrilled to bring the 2Africa Pearls cable to India, adding to our network resilience. We are aggressively diversifying our global network and recently landed the SEA-WE-ME-6 cable in Chennai and Mumbai. 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.”
Airtel’s global network spans more than 400,000km across 50 countries and five continents. The company has investments in 34 cables globally, with some of the recent ones including SJC2 and Equiano.
Mumbai is a hotbed for subsea cables, with the AAE-1, BBG, EIG, Falcon, FLAG, IAX, MIST, and Sea-Me-We-4 cables landing in the city. Besides Airtel’s cable landing station, Reliance Globalcom and Tata Communications each own one cable landing station in Mumbai.
