Opportunities are also opening up for neutral players such as Sify Technologies and Lightstorm – that offer cheaper landing infrastructure in India compared with telecom incumbents such as Airtel and Tata Communications, say industry insiders. Google is set to commission its Blue-Raman Submarine Cable System in Mumbai in the first quarter of 2025, people aware of the development told ET.
The $400-million, 218-Tbps (terabits per second) capacity project entails investment by Italy’s Sparkle too, among others. With Blue and Raman, Google now has 18 investments in subsea cables globally.
Meta is working on a $10-billion, 500-Tbps mega subsea cable within the next three years. It plans to cross this cable through India – among the largest markets for consumer and enterprise artificial intelligence (AI).
“The subsea industry is seeing a major resurgence – 107 new cables were built during 2016-20, representing $13.8 billion in value, with another $18 billion in subsea cable investments underway from 2021 to 2025,” said Vinay Nagpal, chief executive of InterGlobix LLC, a US-based consulting and advisory firm specialising in subsea networks. “India clearly stands at a vantage point to seize those opportunities.”Meta’s cable may either land in Gujarat -where its partner, Reliance Industries, is building India’s largest AI data centre, at 1 Gigawatt – or in Chennai, where Reliance’s joint venture company already has a data centre, people with direct knowledge of the matter told ET.A landing station is a small data centre facility that connects submarine cable traffic to terrestrial networks.
Local Heft
Jio and Airtel are also set to commission three large submarine cable projects – 2Africa Pearls, India-Asia-Express (IAX) and India-Europe-Express (IEX) – between October and next March, expanding existing capacity by more than four times.
“Subsea cable traffic patterns have dramatically changed over the last seven to eight years,” said Amajit Gupta, managing director of Lightstorm, a network infrastructure company that owns 21,000 km of cables.
“From being predominantly voice carriers a few years ago, today, these systems carry 5% corporate traffic, such as from large banks, 45% internet and 50% by just OTTs (over-the-top platforms) and hyperscalers like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft etc. So, tech companies today own nine of 10 largest subsea cables,” Gupta said.
Google, Meta, Bharti Airtel, Tata Communications, Reliance Industries and its unit Jio did not respond to ET’s request for comment.
Jewel in the Crown
The fight is over India’s lucrative market for high-capacity optic fibre pairs laid on the ocean floor to provide global connectivity for high-speed data exchange, a segment currently dominated by Airtel and Tata Communications. Jio, though a relatively new entrant, is making aggressive moves to tap into the demand surge for data, say experts.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the global submarine communications cables market size is expected to reach $40.58 billion in 2028, up 7.2% a year from $27.57 billion in 2023. India’s market is expected to reach $78.6 million by 2030, logging the fastest growth in the Asia Pacific. Increased data sovereignty and security needs are nudging enterprises to run data centres in the country, besides the surge in data demand.
But not everyone can land submarine cables in India. Only international long distance (ILD) and internet service provider (ISP)-A telecom licence holders can own and operate cable landing stations (CLS), according to government regulations.
Access Costs
Airtel and Tata Communications, both permit holders, have enjoyed their share of high access charges. But Big Tech is exploring cheaper options of landing fibre in India. Most large projects have bypassed India due to disproportionately high access charges of incumbents, experts said.
“CLS are like airports for submarine cables,” said Sunil Tagare, a US-based independent consultant on submarine networks. “Imagine if only one airline is allowed to own each airport, and that airline now charges 10 times more for other airlines to use its airport. That is exactly what is going on in India. Each carrier has a virtual monopoly on the CLS it owns.”
