India’s rapid digital expansion is encountering a significant physical bottleneck as the nation’s international connectivity relies heavily on a narrow geographic corridor in Mumbai. At least 13 of the country's 18 intercontinental submarine cables land within a six-kilometre stretch at Versova beach, creating a critical point of failure for approximately 95% of India's westward bandwidth. This geographic concentration poses a substantial risk to the nation's growing digital economy, which increasingly supports high-speed data requirements for cloud services, financial markets, and emerging artificial intelligence infrastructure.
While the country has successfully scaled its broadband subscriber base to over a billion, the physical infrastructure connecting it to the global internet remains disproportionately small. India accounts for roughly 20% of global data consumption but is linked to only about 3% of the world’s submarine cables. Industry experts and analysts warn that this paradox—becoming a digital powerhouse without sufficient control over the underlying physical conduits—could impede future growth if the current infrastructure is not diversified and modernized to meet rising demand.
The Risks of Geographic Concentration
The extreme clustering of cable landing stations in Mumbai creates a systemic vulnerability that could have far-reaching consequences if multiple cables were severed simultaneously. Anwesha Sen of the Takshashila Institution notes that while traffic can technically be rerouted through other landing points in cities like Chennai and Kochi, the process is not instantaneous. Even minor performance degradation caused by rerouting could impose significant costs on sensitive sectors, including banking, stock exchanges, and government networks.
the age of existing infrastructure is a growing concern. A recent analysis by the Takshashila Institution indicates that 11 of India's 18 international cables are over 20 years old, nearing their nominal 25-year operational lifespan. Amajit Gupta, group CEO of Lightstorm, acknowledges that this "economic end-of-life" status for a significant portion of the landing cables is a legitimate area of focus for the industry. The challenge is not merely replacing aging assets but ensuring that new capacity can scale ahead of the explosive demand driven by AI and data-centre expansion.
The Bottleneck of Repair Capacity
Beyond the risk of cable cuts, India faces a fundamental structural weakness in its lack of domestic subsea cable-repair ships. Currently, every cable fault in Indian waters requires the deployment of foreign vessels from hubs like Dubai or Singapore. This reliance introduces significant delays, as these ships must obtain specific licenses to operate in Indian waters, a process that can add weeks to the repair timeline. Experts argue that this regulatory and logistical bottleneck is a more pressing issue than the ability to reroute traffic.
"The bigger structural issue for India isn't rerouting capability - it's repair capacity," says Amajit Gupta. This dependence on foreign assets, combined with lengthy bureaucratic lead times, creates a fragile environment for a nation that is rapidly increasing its data-centre capacity, which has grown from 375MW in 2020 to approximately 1,575MW today. Without a dedicated domestic repair fleet and streamlined permitting, the country remains vulnerable to prolonged outages that could disrupt its digital services.
Bureaucratic Hurdles and Fragmented Governance
Setting up new subsea cable infrastructure is currently hindered by a complex regulatory environment. Aruna Sundararajan, chairperson of the Broadband India Forum, highlights that as many as 16 different government agencies—ranging from telecommunications and defence to environment and port authorities—are involved in the approval process. Establishing a single cable landing station can require upwards of 50 separate clearances, a process that experts describe as fragmented governance rather than a lack of technical capability.
To address these challenges, industry leaders are calling for a single-window clearance system managed by the Department of Telecommunications. Such a system would ideally pre-identify and pre-approve landing sites on both coasts and in island territories, allowing companies to bypass the current, arduous approval cycle. By creating a more predictable regulatory environment, India could better position itself to attract the necessary investment to become a regional cable hub, similar to the model successfully employed by Singapore.
Moving Toward Infrastructure Resilience
There are signs that the industry is beginning to design away from the current concentration. Four new submarine cable systems are currently being commissioned, with three additional projects in the planning stages. Notably, the I-2SEA project, led by a consortium including Lightstorm, aims to link India with Malaysia and Singapore with dual landings in India—at Machilipatnam and a new location in South Chennai. This strategy is intended to provide greater geographical diversity and shorter subsea routes to key inland hubs like Hyderabad.
the government has begun to recognize the strategic importance of these assets by designating submarine cable systems as critical telecommunications infrastructure. This shift is expected to facilitate faster clearances and potentially lead to the creation of legally protected cable zones that restrict harmful activities like anchoring and trawling. Furthermore, emerging technologies such as Distributed Acoustic Sensing could soon allow operators to monitor vibrations along optical fibres, enabling the detection of potential threats to cables before they are physically damaged.
