Over 11,000km of the cable, including 11 landing points, is now active and commercially operational. However, at the time of going to press, work is continuing on the sections running through Egypt and its two landing stations, leaving the cable inactive between Libya and Saudi Arabia. Active landing points include UAE, Oman, Djibouti, Libya, Monaco, Marseilles, Gibraltar and Portugal.
A consortium of 17 telcos, including Bharti airtel, BT, AT&T and Telecom Egypt, invested around $700 million in the 15,000km cable, which has a capacity of 3.84Tbps. Once fully activated, it will be the first direct high-bandwidth optical fibre system connecting the UK to India. The EIG will complement other high bandwidth cables, including the IMEWE, the Unity cable system, the Asia-America Gateway cable systems and the EASSy cable system.
