Airtel today announced a collaboration with Meta to jointly invest in global connectivity infrastructure and CPaaS based new-age digital solutions to support the emerging requirements of customers and enterprises in India. Airtel joined SEA-ME-WE-6 undersea cable consortium earlier this year.
In partnership with Meta and STC, Airtel will extend 2Africa Pearls to India. 2Africa is the world’s longest subsea cable system and is expected to provide faster internet connectivity to almost 3 billion people globally.
Airtel and Meta will extend the cable to Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai and also pick up dedicated capacity to further strengthen its submarine network portfolio.
The 2Africa cable will significantly boost India’s cable capacity and empower global hyper-scalers and businesses to build new integrated solutions and provide a high-quality, seamless experience to customers.
Airtel has signed an agreement to help increase operational efficiency of Open RAN and facilitate energy management and automation in radio networks using advanced analytics and AI/ML models.
Airtel said that it is currently conducting trials for 4G and 5G Open RAN solutions on select sites in the state of Haryana and will commercially deploy the solution across several locations in India over the next few quarters.
Commenting on the partnership, Vani Venkatesh, CEO – Global Business, Bharti Airtel said:
We, at Airtel, are delighted to deepen our partnership with Meta to serve India’s digitally connected economy by leveraging the technology and infrastructure strengths of both companies. With our contributions to the 2Africa cable and Open RAN, we are investing in crucial and progressive connectivity infrastructure which is needed to support the increasing demand for high-speed data in India. We look forward to working closely with Meta to deliver best-in-class digital experiences to our customers in India.
Francisco Varela, vice president of mobile partnerships for Meta, said:
Subsea cables and open, disaggregated networks continue to play a huge role in the foundational infrastructure needed to support network capacity and fuel innovation. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Airtel to further advance the region’s connectivity infrastructure that will enable a better network experience for people and businesses across India.