Airtel today announced a strategic agreement with Gulf Bridge International to unlock the capacity on GBI’s India-Middle East-Europe submarine cable system. Airtel will now acquire the ownership of the India leg of GBI’s India-Middle East-Europe submarine cable.
The company will also pick up a significant capacity on Middle East-Europe leg of GBI’s cable system and has also agreed to formulate joint Go to Market strategies and leverage the footprint of their respective global networks to serve global customers.
With this new partnership, Airtel becomes larger capacities be it owned and leased multiple international submarine cable systems and offers the maximum number of routes between India and Europe. It will make use of Airtel’s existing global network viz. IMEWE, EIG, SMW4 and MENA and add significant long-term bandwidth capacity, enabling it to serve the data demand in emerging markets like India and Africa.
Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO for Global Voice and Data Business, Bharti Airtel said:
We are delighted to announce this agreement with GBI. With this, we are adding a large capacity to meet the growing data, content demand in markets like India as well as serve the connectivity needs of global carriers and enterprise customers. 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 also complement Airtel’s existing global network spanning 250,000 Rkms with presence in 50 countries and contribute to our vision of serving customers with a future-ready network that is built on cutting-edge technology.
Abdulla Al Rwaili, Executive Vice Chairman and Managing Director, GBI said:
We are committed to build a sustainable network in partnership with global leaders, with an ultimate goal to offer the best user experience to our partners and end-users. In line with this objective, today, we are excited to onboard Airtel and together deliver greater value to customers.