NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel has joined 15 global telecommunications majors including South Africa's MTN, British Telecom, US-based AT&T and Verizon to construct a new high-bandwidth, sub-sea cable system linking the United Kingdom and India. The 15,000-kilometer (9,000-mile) cable system, which is

The EIG is estimated to cost about $700 million which will be shared between the 16 consortium members.

The other members of this consortium include Cable & Wireless, Djibouti Telecom, Du, Gibtelecom, IAM, Libyan Telecom, Omantel, PT Comunicac?es-S.A, Saudi Telecom Company, Telecom Egypt and Telkom SA Ltd. The EIG consortium has signed construction and supply agreements with Alcatel-Lucent and Tyco Telecommunications.

In India, the cable landing station will be located in Mumbai and will be operated by Bharti. Beyond the Airtel cable landing station, additional cable landings will be built in United Kingdom, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, Monaco, France, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman and United Arab Emirates. The EIG cable system will also provide seamless interconnection with other major cable systems connecting Europe, Africa, Asia and North America, the consortium said in a statement.

Also Read

?Vodafone, RCom may stay out of MTN race http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3016647.cms

?Nokia Siemens to shift global services business to India http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3016652.cms

?Vodafone ties up with Apple to bring in iPhone http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3016658.cms

?'South Africas MTN would be prized catch for Bharti http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3016942.cms

?Vodafone cuts STD tariff to Rs 1.30 per minute http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3016074.cms

For Bharti, the new consortium is yet another step towards improving redundancy with resilient networks, especially in the wake of the recent crisis when undersea links were damaged off the coast of Egypt, disrupting internet connections in many countries including India. Bharti was forced to reroute its traffic through its i2i cable when the SEA-ME-WE damaged earlier this year. With multiple undersea cables in place, Bharti Airtel can hedge itself by redirecting traffic via other undersea links.

This is the fourth major initiative by Bharti Airtel in the recent past aimed at becoming a major player in the international bandwidth business. In February 08, company had joined hands with five international companies including internet giant Google to construct the 'Unity' sub-sea cable system linking the US and Japan.

Just prior to that, Bharti Airtel along with eight other telcos including VSNL, had signed a formal construction and maintenance agreement to build a fibre-optic submarine cable that stretches from India to France via the Middle East.

Last year, Bharti joined the Telecom Malaysia (TM) led 17-member consortium of telecommunication companies to set up an Asia-America gateway (AAG) - the first submarine-cable system linking South-East Asia directly to the US.

Bharti Airtel president for Enterprise Services David Nishball told ET the company now had achieved the fundamental diversity across all major routes to protect itself from unforeseen disasters.

Mr Nishball also added that the new consortiums that Bharti had joined recently would enable the company to meet all its international bandwidth requirements till 2011. He however did not rule out the possibility of Bharti entering into more consortiums: "We can get into a few additional routes - we may probable look at the Pacific route. We may need alternate options here," he added.