English (UK) 
简体中文(中国) Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) announced a collaboration with Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”) to provide cable landing station in Mumbai for the 2Africa Pearls subsea cable system, in addition to other cooperations.
Foundational connectivity infrastructure such as subsea cable systems are crucial for supporting the rising demand for high-speed data and digital services as India prepares to roll out 5G networks later this year. With the constant endeavor to augment the nation’s infrastructure, Airtel will partner with Meta and STC to extend 2Africa Pearls to India. Airtel and Meta will extend the 2Africa Pearls cable to Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai and also pick up dedicated capacity to further strengthen its submarine network portfolio.
2Africa is now the longest subsea cable in the world, connecting 46 cable landing stations in 33 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, with a cable length of 45,000km. The 2Africa cable system has a design capacity of up to 180Tbps on 16 fiber pairs on key parts of the system.
2Africa Pearls represents the extension of the 2Africa cable system to the Gulf, Pakistan and India, forms part of the whole 2Africa cable system.
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.
Digital 9 Infrastructure plc, parent company of Aqua Comms, has purchased from Meta rights to one fibre pair on the 2Africa cable system to build its private EMIC-1 cable system, enabling connectivity from Europe through Egypt to Oman and India.
In addition to the collaboration on 2Africa, Airtel and Meta will jointly invest in global connectivity infrastructure and CPaaS based new-age digital solutions to support the emerging requirements of customers and enterprises in India.
