About I-2SEA Submarine Cable System:
- India-Southeast Asia (I-2SEA) is a 3,600-kilometer optical fibre subsea cable system that will connect India’s east coast directly to Singapore and Malaysia.
- A consortium comprising Lightstorm, Microsoft, Singtel, and Tata Communications has commissioned the project.
- It is projected to be Ready-for-Service (RFS) by the fourth quarter of 2029.
- It has been specifically engineered to support the rapidly growing demand for AI infrastructure.
- It is being built for hyperscalers, GPU infrastructure providers, and enterprises that need high-capacity links for AI training and inference workloads between India and Southeast Asia.
- It will connect Singapore and Kuala Lumpur directly to India's east coast (via Machilipatnam and Chennai) to serve major tech hubs like Hyderabad.
- The landing stations, to be operated by Lightstorm, will be located in Machilipatnam, providing the shortest subsea access to Hyderabad, and the other at a new landing location in South Chennai.
- I-2SEA will use a deep cable burial strategy, targeting a depth of three metres across buried sections.
- The approach is meant to improve protection and uptime, a critical factor for cables that carry internet traffic, cloud services, and financial data across regions.
