A committee under the Ministry of Environment and Forests has accorded Coastal Regulation Zone clearance for Bay of Bengal Gateway Submarine Cable System being constructed to connect Oman, United Arab Emirates, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) under the ministry has cleared the Indian part of the 100 Gigabit-per-second (100G) submarine cable system project at Mumbai and Chennai.
"The Committee recommended the proposal for CRZ (Coastal Regulation Zone) clearance with the following conditions in the clearance letter for strict compliance by the project proponent.." the EAC said in the minutes of a recently held meeting.
Vodafone South Ltd has under taken the work at the cable landing point in Mumbai while Infotel Telecom Ltd, a Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance company is carrying out the works at Santhome Beach, Chennai.
Alcatel-Lucent, an Euronext and NYSE-listed company and a consortium composed of Vodafone Group, Dialog Axiata, Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat), Reliance Jio Infocomm (now Infotel Telecom), Omantel and Telekom Malaysia, last year signed a turn-key contract to deploy a new 100 Gigabit-per-second (100G) submarine cable system to connect Oman, United Arab Emirates, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
The Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) cable system that traverse over 8000 km is expected to enhance robustness and reliability of international connectivity in the six countries via landing points in Barka (Oman), Fujairah (UAE), Mumbai and Chennai (India), Ratmalana (Sri Lanka), Penang (Malaysia) and Singapore.
