Airtel to acquire Gulf Bridge International’s India operations

Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel on Tuesday announced an agreement with global cloud service provider Gulf Bridge International (GBI) to acquire the India leg of GBI’s India-Middle East-Europe submarine cable system.

“Under the agreement, Airtel will acquire the ownership of the India leg of GBI’s India-Middle East-Europe submarine cable,” the Indian telecom major said in a statement, adding that: “Airtel will also pick up a significant capacity on Middle East-Europe section of GBI’s cable system.”
The company, however, did not divulge the acquisition amount.

Airtel and GBI also agreed to formulate joint “go-to-market” strategies and leverage the footprint of their respective global networks to serve global customers, it said.

“GBI is a multilayer terrestrial and subsea cable-meshed network, which bridges the East to the West through the Middle-East,” the statement said.

“With this (agreement), we are adding a large capacity to meet the growing data, content demand in markets like India as well as serve the connectivity needs of global carriers and enterprise customers,” said Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO for Global Voice and Data Business, Bharti Airtel.