Sixteen top telecommunications firms have announced that their 20,000 km undersea cable linking Singapore with France via India and the Suez is complete.Indian members of the consortium, Bharti Tele-Ventures and VSNL, each have 8 per cent share in the traffic on all routes of this cable. The fourth South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE 4) submarine cable makes for quicker bulk data transfers between India and Singapore, and between India and West Asia, Singapore and Atlantic coast destinations.With landing stations in Chennai (run by Bharti) and Mumbai (run by VSNL), it effectively links any city in India with every place in the globe. Bharti, which invested roughly $40 million into building this longest-ever cable link, hopes to capture a sizeable share of voice and data traffic going back and forth between India and West Asia and France over this new cable, which also reaches Karachi and Fujariah.
