A group of telecom firms, including Vodafone and Reliance Industries joined forces to build an 8,000-km undersea cable system across the Indian Ocean to connect Southeast Asia with the Middle East.
The Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) cable system, which will connect Oman, the United Arab Emirates, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, is expected to carry commercial traffic by end of 2014, Reliance said in a statement. Other members of the consortium include Telekom Malaysia, Vodafone, Omantel, Etisalat and Dialog Axiata.
RIL, which is the only company with nationwide permits for 4G services in India, last week took a step closer to launching the services with a deal to lease undersea cable capacity from Bharti Airtel on the Chennai to Singapore route. Earlier this month, it leased inter-city optic fibre capacity from Reliance Communications.
The consortium of companies signed an agreement for constructing the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) submarine cable system, spanning around 8,000 km that will link Malaysia (through Penang) and Singapore to the Middle East (Oman and United Arab Emirates) with connections reaching out to India (Mumbai and Chennai) and Sri Lanka. The cable system is likely to carry commercial traffic by the end of 2014.
The deal is significant for Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries, as it will provide international bandwidth to the company once its services are rolled out.
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