Bharti launches next generation SEA-ME-WE-4 cable system to India

14 December 2005

Bharti TeleVentures Ltd has announced that the South-east Asia, Middle East and Western Europe-4 (SEA-ME-WE-4) the next generation undersea cable system developed and owned by a consortium of 16 international telecommunications companies including Bharti (VSNL is also a part of this consortium), has been successfully commissioned.

SEA-ME-WE-4 supports telephone, internet, multimedia and other broadband and data applications and has been built with the Terabit DWDM technology to achieve ultra fast terabit per second connectivity. The under sea cable runs across 20,000km connecting the eastern and western world.

The operationalisation of this 160-gbps capacity cable could bring down international leased line tariffs further. This undersea cable, a fourth-generation state-of-the art cable system lands in India at Bharti''s landing station in Chennai.

Bharti''s share of the investment is nearly $40 million in the cable system that connects India to Tuas in Singapore, Melaka in Malaysia, Satun in Thailand, Cox''s Bazar in Bangladesh, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Karachi in Pakistan, Fujairah in the UAE, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Suez, Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt, Bizerte in Tunisia, Palermo in Italy, Annaba in Algeria and Marseille in France.

The SEA-ME-WE-4 undersea cable will complement Bharti''s existing undersea cable – Network i2i that connects Chennai and Singapore. Customers will now be able to access end-to-end seamless connectivity, both within and outside the country through Bharti''s existing network across India and the undersea cable networks.

The new cable system is expected to provide enhanced reliability, better quality of service and seamless connectivity to Europe and the East Coast of the US. The cable system would provide a major thrust to the penetration of broadband internet in the country and also benefit sectors like IT and ITeS, banking and finance sectors.