Pooja Bhatt, assistant professor at O.P. Jindal Global University, says the disparity is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
“Given the young demographics and desire for a digital India, it makes sense for the country to build and maintain its own internet infrastructure for security and governance purposes,” she says.
India has already taken a step: the government now views submarine cable systems as critical telecommunications infrastructure, recognizing their importance for international communications.
Sundararajan says the designation should ensure faster clearance, emergency repair mechanisms and India’s cable repair capabilities, as well as legally protected cable zones around landing sites and routes that limit anchoring and trawling.
Technology can help too.
The technology, called Distributed Acoustic Sensing, could turn optical fibers into sensors that can detect vibrations from ships, anchors or submersibles, potentially identifying threats before the cable is severed.
But the immediate solutions are perhaps more mundane: more landing stations, greater geographic diversity, faster approvals, secure cable routes and Indian repair capabilities.
“Connectivity has historically been concentrated around Mumbai because the ecosystem, infrastructure and demand were already concentrated there,” says Gupta. “But this concentration is precisely the risk the industry needs to avoid.”
This shift is already beginning.
Four new submarine cable systems are being commissioned., externaland three more are planned. Lightstorm is leading a consortium building one of them, I-2SEA, linking India with Malaysia and Singapore. The system will have dual landings in India – at Machilipatnam, which will provide a shorter subsea route to Hyderabad, and at a new landing site in South Chennai, which will add variety to existing routes.
For a country consuming data at an extraordinary rate, the infrastructure that carries it remains surprisingly fragile. India is adding data centers and preparing for an AI-rich future. The question is whether its cables, landing stations and repair capabilities can handle the task.