Flag Telecom commenced commercial operations of the undersea cable system, Falcon, reportedly world’s largest private cable system.
NEW DELHI: In bid to bring the power of broadband to both masses and commercial users, the Anil Ambani Group’s Flag Telecom on Tuesday commenced commercial operations of the undersea cable system, Falcon, which is the world’s largest private cable system constructed in the last five years.
With Falcon, Bharti Airtel and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd fighting it out for bandwidth clients, the Indian information technology and business process outsourcing companies will have more choices in terms of availability of high quality connectivity which is essential to tap the burgeoning client base in geographies such as eastern Europe.
Flag already bridges distance between 35 developed and developing economies like USA, UK, Germany , China and Japan to name a few. The 2.56 terabit Falcon submarine cable system connects 11 countries on its entire length of 11,859 km from India’s financial hub Mumbai to Egypt. It spans Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, UAE, Yemen, Sri Lanka and Maldives, with which India enjoys close trade links. A siezeable expatriate community of Indians work in these countries.
With growth in trade, tourism and communications in the region, Middle East has been an important area for Indian telecom giants as more nations in the region are likely to de-monopolise the telecom sector.
The ever-increasing demand for bandwidth in India, primarily from the software services and financial services sector, means the project will help bring down bandwidth cost for these entities.
Falcon, which will be a part of group firm Flag Telecom, has been launched about four months ahead of schedule, at 80% of the envisaged project cost, Anil Ambani said at the launch.
Built at a cost of $400 million, Falcon makes Flag Telecom, the largest undersea cable system in the world spanning 65,000 route kms. Inaugurating the commercial operation with a call to his Egyptian counterpart, Dr Tarek Kamel, communications and information and technology minister Dayanidhi Maran announced that India-Sri Lanka submarine cable system project will be launched soon and urged the participating nations to bring down landing cost to boost trade and commerce.
Demand for bandwidth is also growing within India where the export-oriented software services sector and the banking industry are large consumers.
Reliance Communications competes mainly with Bharti Airtel Ltd. and VSNL in the bandwidth market.
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