Bharti Airtel Limited (“Bharti”), a leading global telecom services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, and Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (“Reliance Jio”) today announced that they have signed an Indefeasible Right to Use (IRU) Agreement, under which Bharti will provide Reliance Jio data capacity on its i2i submarine cable.
i2i connects India to Singapore and is wholly owned by Bharti. The state-of-the-art cable consists of eight fiber pairs using DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing), capable of supporting multiple terabits of capacity per fiber pair. Its landing points are at Chennai in India and Tuas in Singapore. Reliance Jio will utilize a dedicated fiber pair on i2i. The high speed link will enable Reliance Jio to extend its network and service reach to customers across Asia Pacific region. It will connect Reliance Jio directly to the world’s major business hubs and ISPs, thereby, helping the operator to meet the bandwidth demand and provide ultra fast data experience to its customers.
The deal marks Reliance Jio’s continued efforts to rapidly grow and expand both its international and domestic network and infrastructure by building an ecosystem with multiple carriers and service providers.
Bharti and Reliance Jio will continue to build on this strategic framework and consider other mutual areas of cooperation and development to leverage their respective assets towards offering their customers a much richer experience.
Bharti’s global network runs across 225,000 Rkms, covering 50 countries and 5 continents. It includes ownership of i2i submarine cable system connecting Chennai to Singapore, consortium ownership of SMW4 submarine cable system connecting Chennai and Mumbai to Singapore and Europe, and new cable system investments like Asia America Gateway (AAG), India Middle East & Western Europe (IMEWE), Unity, EIG (Europe India Gateway) and East Africa Submarine System (EASSy). It also has terrestrial express connectivity to neighboring countries including Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan and China.
