Chennai-A&N Islands Cable opens new door for land locked seven sisters.

The effective implementation of a submarine cable system happens when it connects most disconnected authority of the world. It has been done in Bay of Bengal eventually. Whatever the place is and whoever the users are its main goal is to connect the disconnected. It can be Seychelles, Maldives or St. Helena. This is why submarine cable is not access stream although it is a last mile solution.

The Chennai Express is a Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) product. BSNL is government own telecom entity. Hence, most of the technical specification of this cable is X-file. All we know is that it is a 2300km long cable with maximum speed of 100 Gbps. It has been designed with huge capacity focusing future uses and other special purposes-we can say it.

Let us see what is there in A&N islands. It is a series of small islands having 572 islands of which 37 are inhabited. In the left of the islands there is Bay of Bengal where in the right it is vast Andaman Sea. A&N Islands total land area is 8249 sq km where Guam is only 540 sq km. Right now Guam has 14 cables in and 14 cables out. Guam is performing as a long distance resting hub. On the other hand A&N Islands remained unexplored last 30 years by the industry. More than half of the population of the world lives in this region. The internet penetration is also lowest here. A&N Islands can easily become a regional hub serving countries surrounding it.

Singapore is a dustbin of Japan, Australia, EU and North America. Every service is tremendously over priced in this city (Singapore is not a country. It can’t be, Impossible.). Total land area of Singapore is 622.6 sq km. Andaman & Nicobar is 13.3 times bigger than Singapore. To get rid of this dustbin we must focus in this new hub to achieve low latency and less CAPX.  Why cables coming from Europe must travel another 2000km when it can use Satun-Songkhla land transit to enter into South China Sea. Nearest landing station of Indonesia from this Islands is only 150 km. Same plus minus is for Satun, Penang Island and Ngwe Saung. Yet if you want to add extra 2000 km in your cable it is you discretion.

This cable has significance for seven land lock states in the north- east. Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. By commissioning Chennai-A&N islands cable north eastern region gets a SPP (Shortest Path Possible) to international gateways.