European, African telcos join bandwidth bonanza on India-Europe route

The EIG system is scheduled for service by the second quarter of 2010 and will land in thirteen countries: the UK, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, Monaco, France, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, United Arab Emirates and India. Alcatel Lucent and Tyco have been contracted to construct the US$700 million system. 

EIG comes mere months after a major upgrade to the SEA-ME-WE 4 system and the announcement by Tata Communications of a similar system connecting India to Europe. Tata's IMEWE (India Middle East Western Europe) system has a RFS date of 2009 and is also designed with a maximum capacity of 3.84Tbps. 

The addition of EIG and IMEWE will increase the potential capacity along the route by more than 10 fold to close to 10Tbps, from less than 1Tbps today. EIG and IMEWE will bring to five the total number of systems serving the route. These include three consortium systems, SEA-ME-WE 3 and 4 and EIG, and two private systems, FLAG and IMEWE.

NEW PLAYERS ON THIS ROUTE: The EIG consortium brings a slew of new international and African operators to this route. Surprisingly, there were few overlaps between EIG members and members of the consortium that built SEA-ME-WE 4, which consisted of 16 operators (Alergie Telecom, Bharti, Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board, CAT, ETISALAT, FT, MCI (now Verizon), Pakistan Telecom, SingTel, Sri Lanka Telecom, Saudi Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Tele- com Italia, Telekom Malaysia, Tunisie Telecom, and VSNL (now Tata Communications). 

The new EIG system will now bring AT&T, BT and Cable &Wireless to this route. At the same time, EIG also includes a number of members from Africa, including Telkom SA, and PT Comunicacoes from South African, Djibouti Telecom, and the MTN Group, which makes it one of the first major cable system connecting the continent to international markets. 

EIG members who also have a stake in SEA-ME-WE 4 are Bharti, Saudi Telecom, Telecom Egypt and Verizon Business.