Casting 2Africa Pearls in ocean
Airtel and Meta are to extend a subsea communications cable to Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai. On Monday social media giant Meta Platforms and telco Bharti Airtel announced the full details of an extended collaboration and investment in telecoms infrastructure to cater to the rising demand of high speed data and digital services between the Middle East, Africa and India.
The announcement comes on the back of telecom operators’ demand to share revenue with service providers to build networks, said India’s Telegraph Online news site. “Airtel and Meta will jointly invest in global connectivity infrastructure and CPaaS (communications platform as a service) based new-age digital solutions to support the emerging requirements of customers and enterprises in India,” a statement from the companies said.
As part of the collaboration, Airtel will partner with Meta and STC (Saudi Telecom Company), to extend the world’s longest subsea cable system, 2Africa Pearls, to India. The plan to extend 2Africa Pearls to India was first announced by Meta in September 2021. Under the collaboration, Airtel and Meta will extend the cable to Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai and also pick up dedicated capacity to further strengthen its submarine network portfolio. “The 2Africa cable will significantly boost India’s cable capacity and empower global hyper-scalers and businesses to build new integrated solutions and provide a high-quality seamless experience to customers,” the statement said.
Airtel will also integrate Meta’s WhatsApp within its CPaaS platform. With this integration, businesses will now be able to use WhatsApp and reach to provide omnichannel customer engagement to enterprises.
“We are delighted to deepen our partnership with Meta to serve India’s digitally connected economy,” said Bharti Airtel CEO for Global Business, Vani Venkatesh.