Tycoon plans his own cable network
Deep beneath the world’s oceans are hundreds of thousands of miles of cable that carry our emails, phone calls, Google search queries and just about all of the world’s internet traffic.
Now India’s richest man wants to build his own network, placing his country at the centre of a web of international undersea cables that will meet the country’s growing demand for data.
The underwater lines that criss-cross the ocean floors make up the internet’s backbone, supplying 98 per cent of the world’s traffic, including most of our telephone calls. They are designed to withstand earthquakes and heavy currents, have a lifespan of 25 years and are increasingly important strategic assets.
Mukesh Ambani, chairman of the Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, who is worth about US$85 billion (NZ$118b) , is now planning to lay 16,000km of cable.
Reliance’s telecoms business Reliance Jio Infocomm, which has 426 million customers, is to build two cables, along with several unnamed ‘‘key global partners’’ and the submarine cable supplier SubCom.
One link will be called the India-AsiaXpress (IAX) and stretch from Mumbai to Singapore, connecting to Sri Lanka, India’s Chennai, Thailand and Malaysia along the way, and should be ready by 2023. In the other direction the India-EuropeXpress (IEX) will run from Mumbai to Savona in Italy, connecting to the Middle East via Oman and north Africa via Egypt on its way, and is due to be ready by 2024.
The network will be the longest to originate from India and able to transfer up to 200 terabits per second, the equivalent of streaming 89 million HD videos at the same time.
Tiny bits of code are propelled by lasers travelling along threads of glass-fibre wire that are roughly the diameter of a human hair. These fibres are clustered together in pairs, and wrapped within a cable the size of a hosepipe along the sea bed. Each pair acts like a roadway, with traffic going in one direction through one strand and in the opposite direction through the other.
Although there have been advances with satellites, underwater cables remain the fastest and most efficient way to send information across continents. There have been concerns they can be ‘‘tapped’’ by submarines or intercepted en masse by intelligence agencies.
Yet until now, cables connecting to India have largely come from other countries, who get to charge other companies to use them. Tech giants such as Google and Facebook have also begun building their own cables, reducing the cost they need to pay others.
The cables will help Jio’s plan to be at the forefront of the 5G rollout in India.