RCom’s arm to pump in $200 mn in submarine link

Global Cloud Xchange, a subsidiary of telecom operator Reliance Communications, has said it would invest $200 mn for laying 5,000 km long undersea cable network between Mumbai and Singapore.

Bill Barney, chief executive officer of Global Cloud Exchange, said: “This interconnection exchange (ICX) cable will enable us to become the largest cable providers connecting Europe with Asia. It will also provide a 20 percent growth in assets and help us tap emerging markets, like Sri Lanka.”

He also informed that the company has tied up with other three equity partners for the project and their names will be disclosed by the third quarter of 2014.

This ICX cable infrastructure is part of the company’s strategy to provide a direct subsea route to bridge the gap in the emerging markets corridor, and to provide a direct Mumbai-Singapore route in order to subside current outage prone terrestrial routes between Mumbai and Chennai.

The network between Mumbai and Singapore would have a branch landing in Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai. The submarine cable network would take at least 18-19 months to start operations and would start delivering revenues only after 16 months.