Bharti Airtel announced its deal to acquire Orascom’s stake in Middle East North Africa Submarine Cable System (MENA-SCS).
The deal — between Airtel subsidiary Network i2i and Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding — is expected to strengthen Airtel’s global capacity footprint and will help serve enterprise customers with better services.
Airtel’s global network currently runs across 225,000 Rkms, covering 50 countries and 5 continents. The new capacity will enable Airtel to serve the growing demand for data services and enterprise services across its footprint of 18 countries across South Asia and Africa.
Airtel’s network portfolio
# Own i2i submarine cable system connecting Chennai to Singapore
# consortium ownership of SMW4 submarine cable system connecting Chennai and Mumbai to Singapore and Europe
# new cable system investments like Asia America Gateway (AAG)
# investment in India Middle East & Western Europe (IMEWE)
# investment in Unity
# investment in EIG (Europe India Gateway)
# investment in East Africa Submarine System (EASSy)
# express connectivity to Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh and China
MENA-SCS, a 100 percent subsidiary of Orascom, operates a submarine cable network between India and Europe covering Middle East, with options to extend the network to Africa. The submarine optic network capable of carrying Multi Tera bits per second of data speeds.
MENA cable is live and operational connecting Mumbai – Oman – Saudi Arabia – Egypt and Italy. It has the branching options to connect to other countries in Europe, Africa and Middle East via branching options to Cyprus, Greece, Djibouti, Yemen, Iran, Lebanon, Libya and Sudan.
“The proposed acquisition underlines our commitment to provide world-class service experience to the customers. MENA-SCS will be a good addition to our global network portfolio and provide us with a high quality and diversified new route to Western Europe and the rest of the world,” said Ajay Chitkara, director and CEO – Global Voice & Data Business, Bharti Airtel.
