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Informist, Tuesday, Mar. 4, 2025

 

--Sources: RIL, Gujarat govt to set up sub-sea optic fibre landing station

--CONTEXT: India currently has 5 sub-sea optic fibre cable landing stations

--Sources:Gujarat has identified Bhavnagar as site for cable landing station

--Sources: RIL keen on housing sub-sea cable landing station in Jamnagar

 

By Sunil Raghu

 

AHMEDABAD - Reliance Industries Ltd. and the Gujarat government are set to begin talks to set up India's sixth sub-sea optic fibre cable landing station on the state's coast, two senior state government officials in the know told Informist. The state government aims to set up the cable landing station in Bhavnagar and extend the cable landing to GIFT City in Gandhinagar.

 

The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries has already announced its intent to set up the world's largest artificial intelligence-powered data centre facility of 3 gigawatt capacity in the state's Jamnagar district at an estimated cost of up to $30 billion. "Reliance is also planning its own cable landing station at Jamnagar and we need to finalise whether to have a sub-sea cable landing station at Bhavnagar or at Jamnagar," one of the two officials said.

 

A cable landing station serves as the point for landing submarine cables connecting countries and continents. These underwater cables, made of optic fibre strands, carry massive amounts of data between countries and are connected to land-based networks. These cables carry nearly 95% of international data traffic, making them critical for digital economies.

 

Currently, Tata Communications Ltd., Bharti  Airtel Ltd., Reliance Jio, BSNL, Vodafone Idea Ltd., and Global Cloud Exchange have their networks connected to the sub-sea optic fibre cable landing stations in Mumbai, Chennai, Tuticorin, Kochi, and Puduchery. Of these, most sub-sea cables connecting India to the world are either in Mumbai or Chennai.

 

The proposed facility in Gujarat will enable connectivity to international submarine cable networks, enabling faster and more reliable data transmission, and data storage by building data centres. This will help build digital hubs that attract tech companies, reduce latency, and support cloud services.

 

The Gujarat government wants GIFT City to be connected through global sub-sea optic fibre cables, as it is currently home to the data centres of NTT and Yotta. "Adani group, Airtel, Jio and multitude others would find it easy to set up their data centres in the GIFT City," one of the officials said.

 

Setting up a data centre will also require a large amount of electricity and water and both Jamnagar and GIFT City have enough of these, a senior government official said. Another key factor to be considered while deciding the location of a sub-sea cable landing station is that the sea waters should be relatively calm, with less shipping traffic and enough security, the official said.

 

The only inhibiting factors would the funding and the lack of a data centre policy in Gujarat. The state is yet to announce any policy to encourage setting up of data centres. It will have to be ready to shell out up to $600 million for a cable landing station and cable termination facility at GIFT City, an entrepreneur seeking to establish a data centre in the state said on condition of anonymity.

 

At 1419 IST, shares of Reliance Industries were down 0.7% at INR 1,164 per share on the National Stock Exchange.  End

 

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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