2Africa Pearls Cable Lands in India, Connects to Africa and Europe

Bharti Airtel announced that the 2Africa Pearls cable is in the country, linking India to Africa and Europe through the Middle East, according to a statement from the telecom service provider.

2Africa Pearls is a component of the 2Africa subsea cable network, which upon completion will extend over 45,000 kilometres linking Asia to Africa and Europe via the Middle East.

Airtel is the landing partner for the 2Africa Pearls cable in India alongside center3, a digital infrastructure provider based in Saudi Arabia, and Meta.

“We are aggressively diversifying our global network and recently landed the SEA-WE-ME-6 (South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 6) cable in Chennai and Mumbai. We will continue investing in global cable systems and future-proof our network with an aim to deliver high uptime, reliability, and superior quality network to our customers,” Sharat Sinha, director and chief executive – Airtel Business, said.

Airtel's worldwide network covers 400,000 route kilometres (Rkms) across 50 nations and five continents. The firm holds investments in 34 cables worldwide, with recent additions such as 2Africa, Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2), and Equiano.

2Africa Pearls is set to deliver more than 100Tbps (terabits per second) of global capacity to India.

The 2Africa cable project is spearheaded by a consortium that includes Bayobab, center3, China Mobile International, Meta, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone Group, and WIOCC, with Alcatel Submarine Networks in charge of the cable's manufacturing and installation.