A six-kilometre stretch of Mumbai’s coast carries most of India’s international internet traffic, exposing a critical vulnerability as data centres and AI demand rapidly expand.
WEBDESK – MEDIABITES
India’s digital transformation is increasingly dependent on a fragile piece of infrastructure beneath the Arabian Sea, where a dense concentration of submarine cables could leave international connectivity vulnerable to multiple disruptions.
At least 13 of India’s 18 intercontinental submarine cables come ashore within six kilometres of each other around Mumbai’s Versova neighbourhood, carrying as much as 95% of the country’s international bandwidth to Europe, Africa and West Asia, according to experts cited in the report.
A simultaneous failure of several cables would not necessarily cut India off from the global internet. Traffic could be rerouted through other landing points, including Chennai and Kochi. But even slower connections could impose significant costs on banks, stock exchanges, cloud providers and government networks.
Artificial intelligence infrastructure could be particularly vulnerable because AI systems increasingly depend on large volumes of high-speed data transfers.
The scale of the risk is striking because India has become one of the world’s largest internet markets. The country had more than a billion broadband subscribers by late 2025, while it accounts for roughly 20% of global data consumption but is connected to only about 3% of the world’s submarine cables.
India also has just 21 cable landing stations, compared with roughly 1,900 planned and active worldwide, according to the Broadband India Forum.
Age is another concern. A Takshashila Institution paper found that 11 of India’s 18 international cables are more than 20 years old and approaching the nominal 25-year operating life of submarine cable systems.
Cable faults are common globally, with an estimated 150 to 200 occurring each year. Most are caused by fishing activity, ship anchors, natural hazards or equipment failure rather than deliberate attacks.
India faces an additional problem when those cables break: it has no domestic subsea cable-repair ships. Repair vessels must come from abroad and obtain permission to operate in Indian waters, potentially adding weeks to the repair process.
Meanwhile, India’s data-centre capacity has expanded sharply, rising from 375 megawatts in 2020 to about 1,575 megawatts today. Experts warn that subsea cable planning and construction can take years, creating a potential mismatch between connectivity and rapidly growing demand.
The government has classified submarine cable systems as critical telecommunications infrastructure. Proposed measures include more landing stations, protected cable routes, faster approvals, emergency repair mechanisms and development of an Indian cable-repair capability.
Four new submarine cable systems are already being commissioned, with three more planned. One project, I-2SEA, will connect India with Malaysia and Singapore and use two Indian landing points to increase route diversity.
For a country racing toward an AI-driven digital economy, the challenge is no longer simply building more data centres. India must also ensure that the invisible infrastructure beneath its seas can survive, recover and keep pace.
