| A nine-company consortium that includes Bharti Airtel and Tata-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd signed a formal construction and maintenance agreement in Rome today to build a high-capacity fibre-optic submarine cable from India to France via Egypt and Italy. | |||||||||||||||
| The cable will cost $400 million to $450 million to build. | |||||||||||||||
Known as I-ME-WE (India, Middle East, Western Europe), this is the fifth in the series of similar cable systems.
| |||||||||||||||
| Apart from Bharti and VSNL, the consortium includes Etisalat (UAE), France Telecom (France), Ogero (Lebanon), PTCL (Pakistan), STC (Saudi Arabia), TE (Egypt) and TIS Sparkle (Italy). | |||||||||||||||
| The almost 14,000 km I-ME-WE cable system is designed to provide 3.84 terabits per second and is expected to be available for service by late 2009. | |||||||||||||||
| With Se Me We 3 already ten year old and with 50 per cent of Se Me We 4 already booked, the new cable will meet the rapidly growing capacity requirements of Asia and Europe besides satisfying the capacity needs of the US to these regions as well. | |||||||||||||||
| VSNL has been appointed as the network admistrator of the project and will oversee the management of the entire cable. | |||||||||||||||
| The announcement of the new cable comes close on the heels of a serious disruption in internet and communications after critical cable links on the Se-Me-We-4 and Flag Telecom cables were snapped by a ship’s anchor off the coast of Egypt and Se-Me-We 3 had problems on its electronics. | |||||||||||||||
| “The I-ME-WE cable system will offer increased redundancy and resilient networks, and meet the increasing demands of voice, data and Internet traffic,” said Rajan Swaroop, executive director (global network services), Airtel Enterprise Services. | |||||||||||||||
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Bharti, VSNL join undersea cable deal
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment