Reliance Jio today announced commencing of operations of the 100 Gigabits per second Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) submarine cable system that will give Mumbai and Chennai high bandwidth link to South East Asian countries as well as the Middle East.
The 8,100-km cable system linking Malaysia and Singapore to Oman and the UAE, with branches to India and Sri Lanka "provides direct connectivity to South East Asia and Middle East, then onward to Europe, Africa and Far East Asia through seamless interconnection with existing cable system", the company said in a statement.
UK's Vodafone Group, Telekom Malaysia from Malaysia, Omantel of Oman, UAE's Etisalat, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Dialog Axiata from Sri Lanka in a consortium built the BBG submarine cable system to link Malaysia and Singapore to the Middle East, with connections reaching out to India (Mumbai and Chennai) and Sri Lanka.
Two branches of the ultra high speed communications system would connect with India at Chennai on the East Coast and Mumbai on the West Coast.
Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries, owns and operates the strategically important undersea cable landing facility in Chennai, providing a high-speed, high-capacity, low latency route connecting India to the rest of the world.
The Mumbai landing of the BBG Submarine Cable System has been handled by Vodafone South.
"We are excited about the launch of BBG as it offers not just direct connectivity in and out of India through Chennai and Mumbai but also acts as a state-of-the-art 100 Gbps extension of Jio's 100 Gbps core network," said Mathew Oommen, President Reliance Jio.
This brings key international content hubs closer to customers, delivering a much richer experience as an important part of driving India's broadband adoption, enabling consumers to shift away from the current high-cost low value propositions, he said.
Providing robust, reliable, low latency connectivity, BBG strengthens one of the fastest growing global internet routes. BBG has deployed the latest submarine cable 100Gbps transmission technology, utilizing wavelength add/drop branching units along the route, with an initial equipped capacity of 9 terabits per second.
From its terminating points in Barka, Oman to Penang, Malaysia, the cable measures a whopping 5,934 km in length.
Four other branches split off from the main line - a 216 km branch to Fujairah, in the UAE, a 426 km branch to Mumbai, a 142 km branch to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and a 1,322 km branch to Chennai.
