Bharti to build new under-sea cable

• Bharti Airtel, along with eight major global telecommunications companies, has signed a formal agreement to build a high-capacity fibre-optic submarine cable that will connect India to France via West Asia.
• Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd is also part of this consortium.
• The new cable comes even as Internet services in India and other countries in the region have been severely impacted due to three cable cuts recently.
• This will be the ninth under-sea cable touching Indian shores and will enable more bandwidth in the next 2 years.
  The cable system, known as I-ME-WE (India, Middle East, Western Europe), will be operational by 2009 and is being designed to provide 3.84 terabits per second.
• The other companies who are part of the consortium are Etisalat (UAE), France Telecom (France), Ogero (Lebanon), PTCL (Pakistan), STC (Saudi Arabia), TE (Egypt) and TIS Sparkle (Italy). Alcatel Lucent has been given the supply contract for the construction of the I-ME-WE submarine cable system.