Mumbai: One of India's critical digital vulnerabilities lies off the Arabian Sea coast in Mumbai, where a dense cluster of intercontinental submarine cables lands. This six-kilometre stretch near Versova is home to at least 13 of India's 18 submarine cables, which collectively handle approximately 95% of the country's international bandwidth to Europe, Africa, and West Asia.
According to BBC, this concentration poses a significant risk to India's digital infrastructure. Anwesha Sen from the Takshashila Institution highlights the threat, stating that simultaneous damage to these cables, whether accidental or deliberate, could severely impact India's bandwidth to the west. While cable architecture allows for traffic rerouting to alternative landing points like Chennai and Kochi, even minor delays in data transmission could have costly implications for sectors reliant on high-speed data, such as banking and AI infrastructure.
India's dependency on these undersea cables is notable, given their role as the internet's "hidden highways," transmitting data globally. Despite accounting for 20% of global data consumption, India only connects to about 3% of the world's submarine cables. The country has 21 cable landing stations compared to the 1,900 globally, which underscores the need for infrastructure expansion, as emphasized by Aruna Sundararajan, chairperson of the Broadband India Forum (BIF).
The aging infrastructure further complicates India's digital transformation. A significant portion of India's cables are nearing the end of their functional life, with 11 out of 18 international cables over 20 years old. Amajit Gupta, CEO of Lightstorm, acknowledges this as a critical focus area, alongside the frequent occurrence of cable faults caused by natural and human activities.
India's repair capability presents another challenge, given the absence of domestic subsea cable-repair ships. Repair efforts rely on foreign vessels, adding delays due to regulatory requirements. Gupta identifies this reliance on external repair capacity as a bottleneck, stressing the urgency in enhancing domestic capabilities.
The burgeoning demand for data and AI-driven applications necessitates rapid infrastructure development. Despite the rise in data-centre capacity from 375MW in 2020 to about 1,575MW, the lag in subsea cable deployment remains a concern. Sundararajan points to bureaucratic hurdles, involving numerous agencies and clearances, as a major impediment to timely infrastructure expansion.
To address these challenges, experts advocate for streamlined regulatory processes and the establishment of a single-window system for approvals. Pre-identifying cable landing sites and enhancing domestic repair capabilities are also key recommendations. As India aims to become a regional cable hub, these measures, alongside technological innovations like Distributed Acoustic Sensing, could bolster the country's internet infrastructure.
India's journey towards a robust digital future depends on expanding its cable landing stations, ensuring geographical diversity, and developing a self-sufficient repair mechanism. New submarine cable projects, such as Lightstorm's I-2SEA, signify steps in this direction. However, sustaining this momentum is crucial to meeting the demands of an increasingly data-centric economy.