Airtel building landing station for two cable systems in Mumbai

MUMBAI: In a bid to strengthen its international business, Bharti Airtel is building a landing station for its two new cable systems terminating in Mumbai—Europe India Gateway (EIG) and India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE). This new station at Mumbai will complete the crucial `redundancy piece’ (which can be used in case of any emergency) in Bharti’s submarine cable systems.

Besides fortifying Bharti’s capability to offer transit services to Middle East and European traffic, it will provide redundancy to the company’s two Chennai landing stations. While Bharti has not revealed the investment being made at the new landing station in Mumbai, analysts peg it at between $70-$80 million.

“We have been making investment (in the Mumbai landing station) over time. One of the key focus areas for us is to develop Mumbai as a strong hub for business. It will be the second hub of operations for us,” Bharti Airtel president for Enterprise business David Nishball told ET.

“One of the key elements we wanted to add to our value proposition for our enterprise customers was the landing station diversity. The Mumbai station will allow diverse routing for IPLC (international private leased circuit) and strengthen our position in the BFSI segment,” he added.

Bharti has invested over $100 million in the two cable systems that will land in Mumbai. EIG is a $700 million cable system, which will connect 13 countries across three continents. IMEWE will connect India with Europe, via Pakistan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Cyprus, Morocco and Italy and is expected to be operational by the middle of next year.

Source : Economics Times