SingTel to sell undersea cable to Bharti

SINGAPORE:  Singapore Telecommunications, Southeast Asia's top telecoms firm, said on Tuesday it had agreed to sell its stake in an undersea cable between Singapore and India to Bharti Airtel for $55 million.

SingTel, which owns 30.8 percent of Bharti, said in a statement that the sale of its 49.99 percent holding in Network i2i may alternatively be structured as a sale of the assets of i2i to the country's top mobile operator for around $110 million.

Demand for telcoms bandwidth is surging in India, Asia's third-largest economy, where booming sectors such as banking and export-oriented software services are growing at a rapid pace.

Thousands of back offices and call centres in India serving businesses in the United States and Europe are heavily reliant on fast data access provided by undersea cables.

Bharti is among 16 carriers in a consortium that owns the South East Asia, Middle East and Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE) 4 cable system running through 14 countries from Singapore to France.

© Reuters