Syllabus: GS2,IR/ GS3,Economy,Science and Technology
In News
- A consortium comprising tech giant Microsoft, Singtel, Tata Communications and AI connectivity platform Lightstorm will build a submarine cable system connecting India, Malaysia and Singapore.
I-2SEA: the cable system
- Route and Design: It will link India’s east coast, home to the fastest-growing AI and hyperscaler data centre clusters in Hyderabad and Chennai, directly to Singapore, which is the region’s cloud interconnect and AI hub as well as Malaysia’s emerging data centre corridor in Kuala Lumpur.
- It will have dual landings in India, with the one at Machilipatnam providing shortest subsea access to Hyderabad and the other at a new diverse landing location in South Chennai.
- Purpose: It is designed to cater to the rapidly growing demand from hyperscalers, GPU infrastructure providers and enterprises running AI training and inference workloads across the India–Southeast Asia corridor.
- To serve high demand AI workloads, particularly in between major data centre hubs in Hyderabad, Chennai and Singapore.
- Timeline: I-2SEA is targeted to be ready-for-service in 2029 and the estimated length of the high-capacity cable is 3,600 km from Singapore to Machilipatnam with onward connectivity to Hyderabad.
- It is expected to deliver the fastest transmission on the Singapore/Malaysia–Hyderabad corridor, which is the most strategically critical city pair for AI workloads in the region
Undersea cables (Submarine Cable)
- They are the main link connecting the world’s internet networks.
- They connect internet service providers and telecom operators everywhere with those in other countries.
- These thick, well-protected fibre optic cables run along the ocean floor, and carry huge amounts of data at high speed.
- They hit the coast and connect with landing stations which connect them to inland networks.
- They are giving internet access to users, along with terrestrial cables and towers.
Benefits
- Growth for digital economy: Submarine cables are the backbone of India’s rapidly growing digital economy, efficiently ferrying data for the country’s booming fintech, e-commerce and IT service exports.
- High speed, high capacity pipelines are required for real-time applications like financial trading and cloud-to-cloud synchronisation.
- The AI & Data Center Boom: Distributed data center clusters are crucial for large-scale AI training and cloud networks.
- These facilities require skyrocketing bandwidth and next generation cables are required to handle this.
- Domestic and Regional Inclusivity: Indigenous projects like the Chennai-Andaman & Nicobar Island (CANI) cable and the Kochi-Lakshadweep Island (KLI) cable have brought remote island territories into the high-speed broadband fold, improving national security and local economic integration.
- Geopolitical and Maritime Influence: Anchoring of major international consortiums is positioning India as a critical digital transit hub in the Indo-Pacific and the bridge between Europe, West Asia and Southeast Asia.
Vulnerabilities and Challenges
- Damage Vulnerability: Undersea cables are vulnerable to damage from fishing trawlers, ship anchors, earthquakes, underwater landslides, and extreme weather events.
- Most faults occur in shallow coastal waters where the cables are most exposed to human activity.
- Geopolitical Choke Points and the Sabotage : A significant number of the undersea cables pass through strategic maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb.
- Regional conflicts, geopolitical tensions or even sabotage in these areas can heavily disrupt global internet connectivity, as recent events in the Red Sea show.
- Heavy Landing Concentration : India has a very long coastline, but the risk of geographic concentration is high.
- Any localised natural disaster, regulatory choke or maritime mishap there could cut off a huge chunk of India’s Internet bandwidth.
- Regulatory Hurdles and Delays : Operators require clearances from various ministries (Telecom, Home Affairs, Defence, Environment and Fisheries). ]
- Such stringent norms of ownership and security make it a tough jurisdiction for a quick private roll-out
- Lack of repair capability: India lacks domestic undersea cable repair capability and relies on foreign repair ships, leading to repair delays caused by transit time, permits, and clearances.
Suggestions
- India must enact legislation to declare “Cable Protection Zones” along its coastline taking the best practices of the world, as adopted by countries such as Australia and Singapore.
- Commercial fishing, dredging and anchoring close to critical underwater pipelines should be banned in these areas.
- India needs to develop alternative coastal landing stations, away from Mumbai and Chennai.
- Hubs in Visakhapatnam (east coast) and Dhuvaran (west coast) need to be fast-tracked to provide critical redundancy and route-diversity.
- The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) should bring in a single-window clearance mechanism for submarine cable deployment to streamline bureaucracy.
- Easing permissions would attract huge foreign direct investments from global cloud and AI hyperscalers such as Google, Meta and Microsoft.
- Developing home-grown cable laying and repair vessels is an economic and national security imperative.
- the Indian Navy and Coast Guard need to incorporate undersea cable monitoring into their maritime domain awareness systems and employ Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) to guard against hostile interference
Source :TH
