The New AI-Centric Indian Cable: I-2SEA

A consortium consisting of TATA Communications, Lightstorm, Microsoft, and Singtel just announced a new 16 fibre pair subsea network tailored to serve the AI data center markets in Hyderabad, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. It includes two Indian landings, one in Southern Chennai and another at Machilipatnum, the latter being the shortest path to Hyderabad. Both Hyderabad and Lumpur host large numbers of data centers equipped with GPUs for rent to estimate AI large language models. Conversely, Singapore is a distribution point for estimated AI models. What is sometimes called AI inference. Both space and power in the city state are too limited and expensive for AI model estimation. Besides the Singapore and Indian landings, there will likely be a cable branch landing in the Malaysian province of Selangor, chosen because it is the shortest way to reach Kuala Lumpur. Public information on the new system is sparse, but it is also likely that cable will include be extended to Hyderabad and Chennai's key data centers. The same holds true for Singapore and Kaula Lumpur. So on-net service will be from carrier neutral data center to carrier neutral data center, not CLS to CLS, like in older cables.

Another key focus of the cable's design is resiliency. Both the Bengal Sea and the Malacca Strait teem with ships, the number one cause of cable damage in the form of deep sea fishing and anchor dragging. So sea floor burial will be an extraordinarily deep 3 meters in regions where ship traffic is high, which undoubtedly includes the Malacca Strait and much of the Bengal sea. Over the last 25 years average subsea cable burial depth has increased from 1 meter, mostly near shore as defined by the continental shelf, to 2 meters. So 3 meter burial is probably a record for an ocean-spanning communication cable and probably reflects Microsoft's insistence on high reliability. Right now American Tech Giants spending on physical infrastructure is at record highs, but they have ownership on fewer cables than telecom operators. Hence they require extremely high uptime on the systems in which they invest. Tech Giants also incur a higher opportunity cost due to a loss of service in terms of foregone revenue. Every second of time lowers revenue whereas traditional end user and business customers of telecom services simply get less service.

This consortium project is Lightstorm's debutante entrance. Lightstorm owns an Indian WAN that uses power company fibre. It has been focused for a long time on entering the subsea cable market via the development and operation of carrier neutral landing stations. This is its first consortium project and undoubtedly it will provide at least one of the CLS sites. The American infrastructure fund, I Squared, is Lightstorm's owner.  

The project's announcement a few days ago means it is fully funded. NEC won the contract to manufacture and deploy the cable. RFS for I-2SEA is 4Q2029.

Map of the New Fibre Optic I-2SEA Cable


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