Meta, Airtel To Jointly Invest In Telecom Infrastructure In India

Together, the world’s largest social media platform Meta Platforms and Bharti Airtel will invest in telecom infrastructure to meet India’s growing demand for high-speed data and digital services.
The announcement follows telecom operators’ demands for revenue sharing with service providers so they can build networks.

“Airtel and Meta will jointly invest in global connectivity infrastructure and CPaaS (communications platform as a service) based new-age digital solutions to support the emerging requirements of customers and enterprises in India,” the statement said.

As part of the partnership, Airtel will work with Meta and STC (Saudi Telecom Company) to connect India to the 2Africa Pearls undersea cable system, which is currently the longest subsea cable system in the world.

Meta revealed their intention to expand 2Africa Pearls to India in September 2021.

In order to strengthen their submarine network portfolio, Airtel and Meta will take up dedicated capacity and extend the cable to Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai.

“The 2Africa cable will significantly boost India’s cable capacity and empower global hyper-scalers and businesses to build new integrated solutions and provide a high-quality seamless experience to customers,” the statement said.

Within its CPaaS platform, Airtel will also incorporate WhatsApp from Meta. Businesses may now leverage WhatsApp and reach to offer omnichannel client interaction to companies thanks to this connection.

“We, at Airtel, are delighted to deepen our partnership with Meta to serve India’s digitally connected economy by leveraging the technology and infrastructure strengths of both companies. With our contributions to the 2Africa cable and Open RAN, we are investing in crucial and progressive connectivity infrastructure which is needed to support the increasing demand for high-speed data in India,” Bharti Airtel, CEO for Global Business, Vani Venkatesh said.

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Open RAN project group includes Airtel and Meta as members. With the aid of advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning models, Airtel has agreed to help improve Open RAN’s operational efficiency as well as facilitate energy management and automation in radio networks.