Bharti Airtel has joined the ‘SEA-ME-WE-6’ undersea cable consortium in an attempt to increase its high-speed global network capacity. The telecom giant shared the news on Monday in an official statement.

Airtel has participated as a major investor in the SEA-ME-WE-6 and is anchoring 20% of the overall investment in the cable system. It will go live in 2025.

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SEA-ME-WE-6 has 12 other consortium members, including Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Dhiraagu (Maldives), Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Djibouti Telecom, Sri Lanka Telecom, Orange (France), Singtel (Singapore), Telekom Malaysia, Telecom Egypt, and Telin (Indonesia).

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SEA-ME-WE-6 will connect France and Singapore and has a total length of 19,200 route kilometres. It will be one of the largest undersea cable systems globally.

Airtel has joined the SEA-ME-WE-6 undersea cable consortium to scale up the high-speed network for India’s emerging digital economy, the company said in a statement.

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“Through SEA-ME-WE-6, Airtel will add a significant amount of 100 TBps capacity to its global network,” it added.

The telecom major will acquire one fibre pair on the main SEA-ME-WE-6 system. It will co-build four fibre pairs between Singapore-Chennai-Mumbai as part of the cable system.

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Airtel will bring the SEA-ME-WE-6 cable system to India at new landing stations in Mumbai and Chennai.

The cable system will be integrated with Nxtra via Airtel’s large data centres in Mumbai and Chennai to enable global hyper scalers and businesses to access integrated solutions and strengthen India’s position as an emerging data centre hub in the region, the company said in the statement.

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“Undersea cable systems along with data centres are vital infrastructure for supporting 5G and the digital economy… Our investment in SEA-ME-WE-6 is another step in our journey to future-proof our network and build large integrated capacities to enable India’s digital ecosystem,” said Ajay Chitkara, Business Director and CEO at Airtel.

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Airtel already operates the largest undersea cable network out of India and owns the biggest network of data centres. It has a global network span of more than 365,000 route kilometres which connect 50 countries across five continents.

Airtel’s Nxtra operates the largest network of data centres in India with 11 large and 120 edge data centres.