Indian operator Bharti Airtel has announced a partnership with Meta to extend the 2Africa Pearls submarine cable, which connects Africa, Europe and Asia, to India.
2Africa is a submarine cable system, and Airtel and Meta will essentially connect its most recent extension, called 2Africa Pearls, to Airtel's landing station in Mumbai, providing additional dedicated capacity to support the operator's submarine network portfolio.
Airtel said the 2Africa cable will significantly increase cable capacity in India and "enable global hyperscale operators and enterprises to build new integrated solutions and deliver a high-quality, seamless experience to their customers."
Facebook/Meta announced last year that it was building a submarine cable extension called 2Africa Pearls, which will connect Africa, Europe and Asia. This new cable brings the total length of the 2Africa system to more than 45,000 kilometers, which is clearly the longest submarine cable system ever built. With the addition of Pearls, it will provide connectivity to another 1.8 billion people - a total of 3 billion.
"We are excited to deepen our partnership with Meta to serve India's digital connected economy by leveraging the technology and infrastructure strengths of both companies," said Vani Venkatesh, chief executive officer of Bharti Airtel's global operations. "Through our contributions to 2Africa Cable and Open RAN, we are investing in critical and advanced connectivity infrastructure to support India's growing demand for high-speed data. We look forward to working closely with Meta to deliver a best-in-class digital experience for our customers in India."
Francisco Varela, Vice President of Mobile Partnerships at Meta, added, "Submarine cables and open, decentralized networks continue to play a huge role in supporting network capacity and the infrastructure needed to drive innovation. We look forward to continuing to work with Bharti Airtel to further advance the region's connectivity infrastructure and provide a better network experience for people and businesses across India."
It's worth remembering that Meta and many other Internet giants have now been told by many leading European telcos that they should contribute to the development of Internet infrastructure - just not in the form of 5G towers.
