Bharti joins five global telcos for US-Japan undersea cable

UNITY BANDWIDTH CONSORTIUM TO INVEST ABOUT $300 MILLION
BHARTI Airtel has joined hands with five international companies including internet giant Google to construct a new high-bandwidth, sub-sea cable system linking the US and Japan. These two companies along with Global Transit, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet and SingTel have formed the Unity Bandwidth Consortium which will together invest about $300 million to construct the undersea link.This new consortium is yet another step towards improving redundancy with resilient networks, especially in the wake of the recent crisis when undersea links were damaged off the coast of Egypt, disrupting internet connections in many countries including India. With multiple undersea cables in place, Bharti Airtel can hedge itself by redirecting traffic via other undersea links.This is the third major initiative by Bharti Airtel in the recent past aimed at becoming a major player in the international bandwidth business. Last month, Bharti Airtel along with eight leaders of the global telecommunications industry including VSNL, had signed a formal construction and maintenance agreement to build a fibre-optic submarine cable that stretches from India to France via the Middle East. Last year, Bharti joined the Telecom Malaysia (TM) led 17-member consortium of telecommunication companies to set up an Asia-America gateway (AAG) — the first submarine-cable system linking South-East Asia directly to the US.