Bharti Airtel will acquire the India leg of Gulf Bridge International (GBI)’s India-Middle East-Europe submarine cable.
Airtel, India’s largest telecom operator, will also pick up a significant capacity on Middle East-Europe leg of GBI’s cable system. GBI is a global cloud provider for the Middle-East and Europe.
Airtel and GBI will formulate joint go-to-market strategies and leverage the footprint of their respective global networks to serve global customers, Abdulla Al Rwaili, managing director of GBI, said.
Airtel has large capacities — owned and leased — on multiple international submarine cable systems and offers the maximum number of routes between India and Europe.
GBI’s cable asset will complement Airtel’s global network viz. IMEWE, EIG, SMW4 and MENA and add significant long term bandwidth capacity, enabling it to serve the booming data demand across emerging markets like India and Africa.
“The agreement offers great synergies to Airtel and GBI as both partners will able to build on each other’s strengths in their respective markets. This will complement Airtel’s network spanning 250,000 Rkms with presence in 50 countries,” Ajay Chitkara, director and CEO for Global Voice and Data Business, Bharti Airtel, said.
