Bharti looks to sell undersea bandwidth

New Delhi
Bharti Airtel on Monday announced that the company now has the capability and network reach to sell bandwidth or connectivity on its undersea cables to global operators enabling the latter to carry their voice and data traffic across the world, a leap from its earlier practice of offering connectivity largely to and from India.

This means, a Deutsche Telekom or France Telecom in Europe can now buy bandwidth on Bharti’s undersea cables to carry its traffic to Australia or the US. Similarly, a Telstra in Australia can now use Bharti’s cables to carry its voice and data traffic to, say, Japan or Singapore. At present, only Tata Communications and Reliance Communications-owned Flag are the only Indian players that offer global connectivity across countries on their undersea networks. Bharti said it has invested over Rs 2,500 core over the past couple of years to enhance its undersea networks. Undersea cables carry voice and data traffic across the world.

According to Bharti Airtel’s president for enterprise services, David Nishball, the launch of the global wholesale service portfolio is a major step towards the company becoming a global network solutions provider. “From being a regional partner for foreign carriers, Bharti is now uniquely poised to serve global carriers to and from any part of the globe. Over the past few years, we have expanded our global network services portfolio in a manner that complements our investments in existing submarine routes to ensure flexible options for connectivity across all regions of the globe,” he said. Nishball also added that the telco’s undersea networks had a reach of 200,000 kms and could offer connectivity across 200 countries.

On the revenues front, Nishball said that from the second year of operations, the international segment would account for over 20% of the company’s enterprise business. As reported first by ET, Bharti has joined a slew of undersea global cable consortiums, such as Unity North, EIG, IMEWE, EASSy, all of which are currently being built, to enhance its presence in this space. In addition, Bharti’s global network consists of stakes in several other cable systems, such as SMW4, i2i, which is fully-owned, APCN2, c2c, JUCN, TGN, TAT14, Apollo and Hibernia.

Bharti had also inked a deal with Australia-Japan Cable (AJC) to interconnect their current and future networks at the Pacific Island of Guam. The deal will enable Bharti to carry voice and data for telcos in Singapore, the US West Coast and Australia. As per the deal, Bharti will link its assets on the upcoming Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable with AJC, which connects Australia to Guam and Japan. The AAG, being built by a 17-member consortium, is the first submarine cable system linking Southeast Asia directly to the US, and when operational, it will connect 10 locations in eight Asian countries and the US West Coast. Bharti along with five international majors, including Google, is also involved in setting up a separate $300 million sub-sea cable system linking the US and Japan.