Bharti Airtel (Airtel), India’s premier communications solutions provider, on Monday said that it has joined the SEA-ME-WE-6 undersea cable consortium to scale up its high-speed global network capacity to serve India’s fast-growing digital economy.

The 19,200 Rkm SEA-ME-WE-6 will connect Singapore and France, and will be amongst the largest undersea cable systems globally, Airtel said in a statement.

Through SEA-ME-WE-6, Airtel will add 100 TBps capacity to its global network. Airtel has acquired one fiber pair on the main SEA-ME-WE-6 system and will co-build four fiber pairs between Singapore–Chennai–Mumbai as part of the cable system. Airtel will land the SEA-ME-WE-6 cable system in India at new landing stations in Mumbai and Chennai, the company added.

SEA-ME-WE-6 will be fully integrated with Extra by Airtel’s large data centers in Mumbai and Chennai to enable global hyper scalers and businesses to access seamlessly integrated solutions and strengthen India’s position as an emerging data center hub in the region.

Airtel is participating as a major investor in the SEA-ME-WE-6 and is anchoring 20 percent of the overall investment in the cable system, which will go live in 2025.

The 12 other consortium members of SEA-ME-WE-6 include Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Dhiraagu (Maldives), Djibouti Telecom, Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Orange (France), Singtel (Singapore), Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telekom Malaysia, and Telin (Indonesia).

Ajay Chitkara, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Business said, “Undersea cable systems along with data centers are vital infrastructure for supporting 5G and the digital economy. Airtel has been ahead of the curve on this front and already operates the largest undersea cable network out of India in addition to the biggest network of data centers.”