Infinera Targets India's Booming Subsea and DCI Markets
By Ray Le Maistre, Light Reading
May 22, 2024
It has been an eventful last year for optical transport company Infinera, which is trumpeting growth in India after gaining share in the subsea and data center interconnect (DCI) markets.
“We were fortunate enough to have been awarded a majority of the new subsea cables that landed in India in the last year,” said Ryan Perera, the senior vice president of Infinera's Asia-Pacific business. “These are open cables with multiple fiber pairs owned by different players, but the majority of them were awarded to Infinera.” The subsea cables that landed in India last year included India-Asia-Xpress (IAX), India Europe Xpress (IEX), MIST and AAE-1.
In addition, Infinera claims to have won more than 200 terabytes of metro data center interconnect (DCI) business from hyperscalers in the last six months. It is deploying that technology in partnership with local service providers.
The growth opportunities
India's geographical position gives it a unique advantage as the gateway to southeast Asia in the region's developing subsea ecosystem. “Our research indicates that India's used international bandwidth is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 38% between 2021 and 2028,” said a Telegeography blog. “This rate of growth implies international bandwidth demand will increase 10 times over this period.”
Keen on diversifying the subsea segment to provide resilience, India's government is promoting new cable landing stations, including Digha in the state of West Bengal and Vizag in Andhra Pradesh. Several new subsea cables, such as Raman and 2Africa, are also likely to land this year. The booming subsea cable market is emerging as a big opportunity for optical transport vendors like Infinera.
This growth in international capacity and government support has given a boost to the region's data center industry. According to a recent CBRE report, India has now overtaken major countries such as Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, with the highest data center capacity – around 950 megawatts – in the entire Asia-Pacific (excluding China). The report further says the Indian data center market is likely to add capacity of 850 megawatts between 2024 and 2026, exceeding 1800 megawatts in total.
