TRAI Chief Calls for 10x Expansion of India’s Subsea Cable Infra to Meet Surging Data
By Karan Mahadik, The Indian Express
March 26, 2025
Highlighting that India’s existing submarine or subsea cable infrastructure falls short of its digital ambitions, Anil Kumar Lahoti, the chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), said that the country “has to do much more” to strengthen its subsea cable network.
Lahoti reiterated that India hosts only 1 per cent of the world’s subsea cable landing stations, in contrast to smaller countries such as Singapore which has 26 subsea cables landed across three landing sites. He emphasised the need to improve and expand India’s cable systems by taking a “strategic, security conscious and innovation driven approach.”
The head of the telecom regulatory body made these remarks at India’s first-ever International Subsea Cable Systems Conference hosted by Broadband India Forum (BIF) in New Delhi on Tuesday, March 25.
The other speakers at the inaugural session of the conference included key industry stakeholders such as Robert Ravi, CMD, BSNL; Scott Cowling, Director, Network Investments, Meta; Rahul Vatts, Chief Regulatory Officer, Bharti Airtel; Amajit Gupta, Group CEO & MD, Lightstorm; and Thomas Ohta, Senior Director- Head of Submarine Sales Department, Submarine Network Division, NEC along with Sonia Jorge, Executive Director, Global Digital Inclusion Partnership (GDIP) and BIF Chairperson Aruna Sundararajan.
The event comes just weeks after three undersea cables connecting India to global telecom networks were reportedly severed, possibly due to targeted attacks, affecting 25 per cent of data traffic flowing between Asia and Europe. Indian telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Tata Communications were reportedly forced to reroute traffic to other cable systems following the disruption.
“Recent global subsea cable disruptions highlight the need for strengthening this backbone. To safeguard our strategic and commercial interests, geographical diversity of subsea cables, and increasing CLS (cable landing stations) sites and subsea cables, are important.” the TRAI chief said.
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