Undersea cable systems connecting India!

[Raju ram din]

So i found that not many members here know about the actually undersea cable capacity we have. So i have made a gist of information here. The total capacity and lit status capacity is updatedas on 10-10-15.


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Station Name: Mumbai Cable Landing Station, or Mumbai CLS
Station Owner: Tata Communications(formerly VSNL)
Available Backhaul Providers: Tata Communications
Cable Systems:
FLAG FEA :- Fibre Loop Across Globe Europe Asia :- commercial use on 22 November 1997, 27000 Km, Capacity 10 Gbit/s.
IMEWE :- India Middle East Western Europe:- commercial use 2009,13000KM, Capacity 3.84Tbps.
SEAMEWE3:- South East Asia Middle East Western Europe -3, commercial use 2000,39000KM, Capacity 480Gbit/s.
SEACOM:- African cable system,commercial use July 2009,17000KM, Capacity 4.2Tbit/s.Currently Lit capacity:- 100 Gbit/s
TGN-EA:- Tata Global Network Euro asia, commercial use 2012,9280KM, Capacity 10 Gbit/s
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Station Name: Versova Mumbai Cable Landing Station, or Versova CLS
Station Owner: Reliance Globalcom
Available Backhaul Providers: Reliance Globalcom
Cable Systems:
FALG (eastwhile FALCON FLAG Alcatel-Lucent Optical Network):-Fiber Optic Link Around the Globe, commercial use 2006,28000KM, Capacity 500 Gbit/s
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Station Name: Mumbai Cable Landing Station, or Mumbai CLS
Station Owner: Bharti Airtel
Available Backhaul Providers: Bharti Airtel
Cable Systems:
EIG:-Europe India Gateway,commercial use 2011,15000KM, Capacity 3.84Tbp/s
SEAMEWE4:-South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 4, commercial use 2011,18800KM, Capacity 1.8Tbp/s
(provides the primary Internet backbone between South East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe. It is beleived that at some point NSA had was able to traffic and phone calls over this cable)
====================================================================
Station Name: Mumbai Cable Landing Station, or Mumbai CLS
Station Owner: Sify Technologies Limited
Available Backhaul Providers: Sify Technologies Limited
Cable Systems:
GBI:- Gulf Bridge International,commercial use July 2008,Capacity 100Gbit/s.Currently Lit capacity:- 40 Gbit/s
MENA:-Middle East and North Africa Submarine Cable System, commercial use not known,9000Km, Capacity 5.76Tbit/s.Currently Lit capacity:-
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Station Name: Chennai Cable Landing Station, or Chennai CLS
Station Owner: Tata Communications
Available Backhaul Providers: Tata Communications
Cable Systems:
TIC:-Tata Indicom Cable, commercial use 2004,3175 Km, Capacity 5.12 Tbps.Currently Lit capacity:- 320 Gbps
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Station Name: Cochin Cable Landing Station, or Cochin CLS
Station Owner: Tata Communications
Available Backhaul Providers: Tata Communications
Cable Systems:
SEAMEWE3:- South East Asia Middle East Western Europe -3, commercial use 2000,39000KM, Capacity 480Gbit/s.
SAFE:- South Africa Far East, commercial use 2002,13104KM, Capacity 440Gbit/s.
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Station Name: Tuticorin Cable Landing Station, or Tuticorin CLS
Station Owner: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)
Available Backhaul Providers: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)
Cable Systems:
BLCS:- Bharat Lanka Cable System, commercial use 2006,320KM, Capacity 960Gbit/s.Currently Lit capacity:- 40 Gbps.(point to point between India and Srilanka)
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Station Name: Chennai Cable Landing Station, or Chennai CLS
Station Owner: Bharti Airtel
Available Backhaul Providers: Bharti Airtel
Cable Systems:
I2I:-Europe India Gateway,commercial use 2002,3200KM, Capacity 8.4Tbp/s (point to point between India and Singapore)
SEAMEWE4:-South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 4, commercial use 2011,18800KM, Capacity 1.8Tbp/s
(provides the primary Internet backbone between South East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe. It is beleived that at some point NSA had was able to traffic and phone calls over this cable)
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Digha Cable Landing Station Yet to be operational.
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Notes:-

1.None of the cable systems are using the full capacity. For systems where I know about the current lit capacity, I have mentioned for rest all its unknow but way below (atleast 50-70%) that the full lit capacity.
2.The operators and backhaul providers are not the actuall onwers of the cable systems in most of the case.
3.None of the cables passing thru India is thicker than 3 inch.
4.The capacity mentioned above is only the data capacity. On top this every cable has dedicated capacity for phone lines and other type of secured and unsecured communication.

 

[itzmynet]

last station from where i2i originates is "Chennai Cable Landing Station, or Chennai CLS".

apart from above cable systems which are already in use, 4 more cables are under deployment.
1. BBG - bay of bengal gateway is scheduled to be ready by dec 2015
2. AAE-1 - asia africa europe -1 by Q4 2016
3. SeaMeWe-5 by nov 2016
4. ICX - india cloud xchange by Q2 2016

 

[TJKV]

From what I understand, most of these cable owners lease capacity (The buyers being ISPs mostly) in terms of speed and not some amount of data that can be transferred over the cables. Yet we are burdened with FUPs that imposed by the ISPs only as a revenue generation model. Correct?

 

[igloo]

Not all the capacity available is solely for India, it is shared among all the landing stations depending on who agree to pay the lease charges?

 

[vishalrao]

Seems pretty paltry to me (the speed/bandwidth capacity I mean) for the existing ones in OP I wonder how much speed the new ones coming up (in second post) will enable here.

Some of the cable systems are listed multiple times (repeated) in OP.

 

[Raju ram din]

last station from where i2i originates is "Chennai Cable Landing Station, or Chennai CLS".

Ah yes, typo mistake. Corrected it now. Good find.

more cables are under deployment.

Yes, they are yet to be deployed, that is why they are not here in this list. AFA, timelines are concerned, IXC is the owner of FLAG and new system will part of the current system only. So you can say a new capacity or loop segment. BBG, i dont think it is going to get compled this year. I dont see things moving that fast.

Ps only as a revenue generation model. Correct

Bingo! You got the whole business idea. Current markrt prevailing max rate is rs 37 for 1Gbps. The data fup or limit is purely from isp side to make.money.

Not all the capacity available is solely for India,

Yes, thats the complete capacity end to end. But having said that, same amount of data can be transfered from point A to point B or end to end.

who agree to pay the lease charges?

Yes, thats the basic business idea of cable system. Operator and cable omwer gets thr share depending upon commercial arrangment and backhaul provider gets the carriage fee for connectivity to isp.

 

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[Raju ram din]

Some of the cable systems are listed multiple times (repeated) in OP

No, those are having multiple landings in India. That is why they are mentioned twice.

 

[vishalrao]

OK I see, but the capacity should only be counted once, right?

I was just thinking this capacity might sound nice in terabits but if your consider number of Internet users in India (current and future) it seems pretty weak to me

 

[Raju ram din]

number seems pretty weak to me

Well not exactly, i will expalin.
Not all users require the same amount of bandwidth at the same time.
Secondly, a good part of traffic stays inside india and the cables are not at all used.
Thirdly, at present none of the cable system is lit to its fully capacity....or even half of it. As the permanent traffic grows, the operators lit additional capacity.
With current numbers, we still have enough room to accommodate all users. Dont forgot these capacities are not just for india but they the overall cable system capacity and these are not the only cable systems, thr are nearly 750 more cabels(long, short, mesh and p2pp along with private) are deployed across the planet. As of dec 2014, we were only using nearly 20% of the total capacity of cable systems deployed. You might amazed to find, only 1% of traffic uses satellites, rest all travela on cables.

The only purpose of deploying new cables, if to bring competition so that quality of services and commercials can be more affordable. Also, the backup capacity is needed, when we hit any cable cut or down event.

Ps:- traffic means, data+voice phone line+all type of signaling+secured and unsecured communication+video feeds (non ip based feeds)+test signal data for reasearch.

 

[handa10]

Hey I want to research the topic in detail

Can't India get it's own dedicated server
What all it require to build that thing which we are importing from other nation

What's there in other state data centre

Can't we set that machine in India also
I'm curious for this