Bharti Airtel along with eight major leaders of the global telecommunications industry has signed a formal Construction and Maintenance Agreement in Rome to build a high-capacity fiber-optic submarine cable that stretches from India to France via the Middle East. The cable system, known as I-ME-WE (India, Middle East, Western Europe) is the fifth in the series of similar cable systems which includes the SEA-ME-WE series.

Nine leading telecommunications companies globally have come together to form the I-ME-WE consortium and are spearheading the cable project. These include Bharti Airtel (India), Etisalat (UAE), France Telecom (France), Ogero (Lebanon), PTCL (Pakistan), STC (Saudi Arabia), TE (Egypt), TIS Sparkle (Italy) and VSNL (India). The Supply Contract for the construction of the I-ME-WE submarine cable system was also signed by the consortium members.

Rajan Swaroop, Executive Director-Global Network Services, Airtel Enterprise Services said, "Our partnership in I-ME-WE cable system reinforces our commitment to invest in state of the art technologies for providing scalable and future proof solutions for our International customers. This investment is in line with our strategy to extend our International footprint and focus on connecting our customers in India to the Middle East and Europe. While our existing i2i and SEA-ME-WE-4 cable systems already provide connectivity across the globe, the I-ME-WE cable system will help offer increased redundancy and resilient networks, while meeting the increasing demands of voice, private data and Internet traffic. This partnership will also play a key role in our endeavor to provide alternate routes for meeting the bandwidth requirements of our customers at any given time."

The I-ME-WE cable system is designed to provide 3.84 terabits per second and covers a distance of almost 14,000 kilometers, extending from India right up to France. The cable system is likely to be available for service by late 2009. Once complete, it shall meet the ever-growing capacity requirement of Asia, Middle East and Europe besides satisfying the capacity needs of USA to these regions as well.