Bharti Acquires Whole Assets in i2i Cable Network

NetworkWorld, Singapore, January 23, 2007 - Indian telecom service provider, Bharti Airtel, will acquire a submarine network cable system from Network i2i, a company jointly owned by Singapore Telecommunications and a Bharti group company, the company said in filings to the Bombay Stock Exchange Tuesday.

Bharti Airtel will purchase all the assets or equity for an overall consideration of $110 million, subject to obtaining the requisite approvals. SingTel said earlier on Tuesday that it was selling its 49.99% stake in Network i2i. The transaction may alternatively be structured as a sale of the assets of Network i2i to Bharti Airtel for approximately $110 million, SingTel said.

SingTel and the Bharti Group set up Network i2i as a joint venture in 2001 to build an undersea cable between India and Singapore.

SingTel did not immediately comment on the reason for its decision to divest from Network i2i.

The 3,100 kilometer cable link between Singapore and India began to carry commercial traffic in 2002. The cable has a capacity of 8.4Tbps, and is linked at Singapore to other cable systems to the rest of the world.

Bharti Airtel has two international landing stations in Chennai that connect to the Network i2i cable system and to the SEA-ME-WE-4 (South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 4) submarine cable to Europe.

Source: NetworkWorld