Airtel has announced the landing of the SEA-ME-WE 6 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6, or SMW6) submarine cable in Chennai, following a previous landing in Mumbai on December 30, 2024.
The landings were facilitated by SubCom, the primary contractor for the cable system’s engineering, manufacturing, and installation. The 21,700 Rkm SMW6 cable connects India to Singapore and Marseille, France, with a terrestrial link across Egypt.
Airtel’s investment in the cable consortium includes core cable capacity and the co-construction of a private network comprising four fiber pairs connecting Singapore, Chennai, and Mumbai. The system is expected to add 220 Tbps of global bandwidth to India’s capacity.
Both the Mumbai and Chennai cable landing points will connect directly to Airtel’s data center subsidiary, Nxtra by Airtel. This integration aims to provide global hyperscalers and businesses in India with streamlined access to international connectivity and data center services.
The SEA-ME-WE 6 forms a part of Airtel’s extensive global network, which spans five continents and includes investments in 34 submarine cables. Recent additions to their portfolio include 2Africa, Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2), and Equiano.
Beyond these, Airtel’s subsea network investments encompass several other major systems, such as the i2i Cable Network (i2icn), Europe India Gateway (EIG), IMEWE, SEA-ME-WE-4, AAG, Unity, EASSy, Gulf Bridge International (GBI), and Middle East North Africa Submarine Cable (MENA Cable), among others. These investments connect India to key regions across the Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.
Commenting on this, Sharat Sinha, Director & CEO – Airtel Business, said:
At Airtel, we strive to provide the best in class services to our customers and this new investment and milestone would further improve our secure, diverse and scalable global network. We are delighted to further strengthen our global connectivity by landing one of the largest cable systems into our facilities. This complements our existing network strength of 400,000 Rkms across 50 countries. This also underlines our commitment to address Digital India’s growing demand for global connectivity & data with additional routes, diversity and capacity.