Bharti Airtel to build India-Middle East-France I-Me-We cable system with global telecom leaders

New Delhi: Bharti Enterprises group company and mobile services leader, Bharti Airtel, along with eight major leaders of the global telecommunications industry signed a formal construction and maintenance agreement in Rome today to build a high-capacity fibre-optic submarine cable that stretches from India to France via the Middle East.

The cable system, known as I-ME-WE (India, Middle East, Western Europe) is the fifth in the series of similar cable systems, which includes the SEA-ME-WE series.

Nine leading telecommunications companies globally have come together to form the I-ME-WE consortium and are spearheading the cable project. These include Bharti Airtel (India), Etisalat (UAE), France Telecom (France), Ogero (Lebanon), PTCL (Pakistan), STC (Saudi Arabia), TE (Egypt), TIS Sparkle (Italy) and VSNL (India).

The consortium members also signed the supply contract for the construction of the I-ME-WE submarine cable system today.

"This investment is in line with our strategy to extend our international footprint and focus on connecting our customers in India to the Middle East and Europe," said Rajan Swaroop, executive director-global network services, Airtel Enterprise Services.

Swaroop said, "While our existing i2i and SEA-ME-WE-4 cable systems already provide connectivity across the globe, the I-ME-WE cable system will help offer increased redundancy and resilient networks, while meeting the increasing demands of voice, private data and Internet traffic. This partnership will also play a key role in our endeavour to provide alternate routes for meeting the bandwidth requirements of our customers at any given time."

The I-ME-WE cable system is designed to provide 3.84 terabits per second and covers a distance of almost 14,000 kilometers, extending from India right up to France. The cable system is likely to be available for service by late 2009. Once complete, it shall meet the ever-growing capacity requirement of Asia, Middle East and Europe besides satisfying the capacity needs of USA to these regions as well.

The I-ME-WE cable system will compliment Bharti Airtel's existing high bandwidth cable systems in the region. The company has two international landing stations in Chennai that connects two submarine cable systems - i2i to Singapore and SEA-ME-WE-4 to Europe. Bharti Airtel has also recently partnered the Asia America Gateway cable system to provide the much-needed diversity against traditional routes to the US, mainly carrying broadband traffic.