Indian press reports say that prime minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the new submarine optical fibre cable (OFC) connecting Chennai and Port Blair, in what appears to have been a virtual ceremony using videoconferencing.
The ceremony took place less than three years after the prime minister laid the foundation stone for the project at Port Blair in December 2018. In his statement, the prime minister said that the inauguration of the submarine OFC in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands will ensure high-speed broadband connectivity, fast mobile and landline telecommunications services and will give a big boost to the local economy.
According to an official release, once inaugurated, the submarine OFC link will deliver bandwidth of 2 x 200 Gigabits per second (Gbps) between Chennai and Port Blair, and 2 x 100 Gbps between Port Blair and the other islands. The submarine cable will also connect Port Blair to Swaraj Dweep (Havelock), Little Andaman, Car Nicobar, Kamorta, Great Nicobar, Long Island, and Rangat.
Of course, official press releases have played up the eventual effect of the new link on multiple services, from telemedicine and tele-education to e-commerce, but there has apparently been an immediate effect on 4G mobile services, which were constrained due to limited backhaul bandwidth provided via satellite.
Bharti Airtel has now become the first operator to offer 4G services in the islands. The operator has been serving customers in Andaman and Nicobar since 2005 and was the first private operator to launch mobile services there. The commissioning of the fibre link between Chennai and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has apparently allowed Bharti Airtel to claim another first.
