Bharti signs Sea-Me-We-4 pact

Bharti Tele-Ventures has signed an agreement to join the South-East-Asia-Middle-East-Western-Europe-4 (Sea-Me-We-4) consortium along with 15 other global telecom operators. The company will be investing $40 million in the venture.

Yesterday, VSNL had announced a similar tie-up with the under-sea cable system.

"The new cable system is expected to be in place by the third quarter of 2005 and will support telephone, Internet, multimedia, various broadband and data applications," Bharti said in a statement. The estimated cost of the entire project has been pegged at around $500 million .

Sea-Me-We-4 is the second major international initiative by Bharti Tele-Ventures in the data and broadband space after the installation of the Network i2i project in partnership with SingTel.

The contract for the submarine cable has jointly been awarded to Alcatel Submarine Networks of France and Fujitsu of Japan.

The system is among the most economical cable systems in the region built with the latest technology.