Total length 15,000 km | Date of first use February 2011 | |
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Design capacity 3.84 terabits per second | ||
Europe India Gateway (EIG) is a submarine communications cable system to connect the U.K., Portugal, Gibraltar, Monaco, France, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and India.
Contents
Organization and owners
It is about 15,000 kilometres long. It is capable of delivering up to 3.84 terabits per second. The cable system is built by both Alcatel-Lucent and TE Subcom (Formerly known as Tyco) and was scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2010. The EIG is the first direct high-bandwidth optical fibre system from Britain to India.
The cable system was invested in by 18 companies, including: AT&T; Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited; Bharti Airtel; BT Group; Cable & Wireless Worldwide; Djibouti Telecom; Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co. (du); Gibtelecom; The Libyan International Telecommunications Company; Mauritius Telecom; Monaco Telecom; MTN Group; Omantel; PT Comunicações, S.A.; Saudi Telecom Company; Telecom Egypt; Telkom SA, and Verizon Business. The construction of the cable will cost $700 million.
Outage
In March 2013, the EIG cable was cut near Egypt. A few days later the I-ME-WE and SEA-ME-WE 4 cable was also cut near Egypt, supposedly by divers.
Cable landing points
EIG has cable landing points at: