In an effort to boost its upcoming 4G LTE network Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd has signed a consortium with International telecom players to establish the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) submarine cable system. The 8,000 km submarine cable system will connect Malaysia (through Penang) and Singapore to the Middle East (Oman and United Arab Emirates) with connections reaching out to India (Mumbai and Chennai) and Sri Lanka.
The Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) submarine cable system is a collaboration between Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) (Malaysia), Vodafone Group (UK), Omantel (Oman), Etisalat (UAE), Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (India) and Dialog Axiata (Sri Lanka). The cable system will be deployed by Alcatel Lucent and have a 100 gigabit per second (Gbps) capacity which is upgradable to 400 Gbps in four years. The cable will further connect to the Transantlantic and Transpacific cables on either end, providing RJIL connectivity to the rest of the world
Reliance Jio Infocomm heavy investment in this project comes at a time when the company is expanding its own 4G network. Reliance Jio Infocomm the 4G subsidiary of Reliance Industries (RIL) is the only company to have won Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum across the country in the 2010 spectrum auction. The cable system will help Reliance Jio to provide a robust and future-proof backbone for rolling out its state-of-the-art 4G services in India. The cable system is excepted to carry commercial traffic by the end of 2014.