Bharti Airtel announced on Tuesday that it has acquired the ownership of Indian leg of cloud services provider Gulf Bridge International’s (GBI) India-Middle East-Europe submarine cable system.
The agreement provides the country’s largest telecom operator with more avenues to add data capacity for its enterprise business. Bharti will also pick up a significant capacity on the Middle East-Europe leg of GBI’s cable system, the operator said, adding that both the companies have also agreed to formulate a joint Go-to-Market strategies as well as leverage the footprint of their respective global networks to serve customers.
“GBI’s cable asset will complement Bharti’s existing global network – IMEWE, EIG, SMW4 and MENA – and add significant long term bandwidth capacity, enabling it to serve the booming data demand across emerging markets like India and Africa,” the operator said in a statement.
Submarine cable system is part of Bharti’s enterprises arm – Airtel Business. Revenues in this segment comprises of Enterprise & Corporates Fixed Line, Data and Voice businesses and Global Business, which include wholesale voice and data. Bharti has capacities, both owned and leased, on multiple international submarine cable systems and offers a number of routes between India and Europe. During the October-December quarter in FY18, Airtel Business reported a revenue of Rs 2,900 crore and an operating profit of `1,165 crore. It has seven submarine cable systems as well as 1.75 million customers globally.