India Broadband Forum

Rameshjeee

Soon, undersea cable cut won’t snap your Net

India could soon become nearly immune to the occasional undersea cable cuts that hamper Internet and telephone connectivity. Operators such as Bharti, Reliance, Tata Communications and BSNL are building multiple undersea cables that will enable in country and the entire region to enjoy disruption-free services. Undersea cables were damaged twice this year, slowing down services and in some cases, bringing them to a standstill.

For instance, Bharti and its consortium partners are working on four new cable systems linking Asia to Europe and the US. Ditto with Tata Communications and Reliance Communications (RCOM) that are building four global cable systems. A BSNL- MTNL combine, too, will soon join in — the state-owned telcos will soon place orders to build two cables connecting India to West Asia and Singapore.

The year 2008 saw two major instances where multiple undersea cables had snapped almost simultaneously, leading to internet and phone outages in the Middle East and Asia, including India. The latest incident happened about 10 days ago when three cables — SeaMeWe-3 and SeaMeWe-4, both owned by a consortium of telecom companies, and RCOM’s FLAG — were cut almost at the same time due to seismic activity in the Mediterranean. A similar incident happened in January when three cables — RCOM- owned FLAG and FALCON and the SeaMeWe-4 cables were damaged by the anchors dropped by ships. However, such outages may soon be a thing of the past, if one were to consider the additional capacity along different routes that will soon come into play.

The biggest of these projects is the multi-billion dollar FLAG Next Generation Network being built by RCOM which when completed will cover 50,000 km and span 60 countries across continents. The project is to be completed by fiscal 2009-10 to build the world’s largest IP network over submarine cable systems and will create capacity to carry 2.5 billion simultaneous voice calls, 300 million simultaneous web chats and 52 million simultaneous video chats. Millenium Telecom, a JV between BSNL and MTNL, will soon award contracts to the tune of Rs 1,800 crore for the West Asia and Singapore undersea links.

itsmemad

Wow.. Thats a good step in right direction!

Admin

It would be great as and when that happens our internet tariffs will go down and India might become a hosting hub as well in future like Texas is.

Jaganathsamal

Its a good to hear this

shirish

Nice,
Admin any link or something to know how or why texas is hosting hub.

I would love to get some more updates on the FLAG & other cables being laid.

Sid

good news.......

just4kix

But undersea cable laying is a costly affair. I hope that companies don't irrationally increase prices and pass on the cost to the users.

shirish

just4kix,
I don't see it any other way, our broadband charges are one of the highest in the world so I don't see them pushing it any higher. The only way for the broadband service providers is to take the prices south i.e. the only way they can grow. As a consumer what we need to be aware about is the cartelization which is there in this space.