Three years after the launch of the undersea Internet cable, Andaman & Nicobar Islands struggle with choppy connectivity

Official data shows only two telcos -- BSNL and Airtel -- have bought a small amount of bandwidth between Port Blair and other islands, reflecting the inequality of coverage, even years after the undersea Internet cable was launched in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The undersea cable between the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Chennai, connecting the Union Territory to the global Internet, has seen a reasonable level of interest from telecom operators, who have to buy bandwidth on the system to be able to serve islanders on mobile and fixed line connections with fast web access.

According to information provided to The Hindu by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), BSNL alone has been allotted 40 GBPS in bandwidth in the largest segment of the 2,300-km long cable, the one between Chennai and Port Blair. Airtel has bought 20 GBPS, and an additional 4.625 GBPS in bandwidth on the smaller parts of the cable, between Port Blair and islands like Car Nicobar, Campbell Bay, Long Island, and Rangat.

The Chennai-Andaman & Nicobar Islands (CANI) cable was inaugurated in August 2020, and soon after, islanders with physically wired home broadband and mobile connections in Port Blair, the capital, saw their speeds improve dramatically. Before the cable system was meticulously laid on the ocean floor — and completed ahead of schedule amidst the COVID-19 pandemic — the bandwidth available to the islands was just less than 1% of what has been thrown open to telecom operators now.

“I have been using broadband since 2012,” Nirman Lall, 39, who runs a lodge about a kilometre away from the National Memorial that used to house Port Blair’s notorious Cellular Jail, said over a phone call.

Tourists needed the Internet to check in for flights and browse online, so he had to get a connection from BSNL that relied on the islands’ heavily strained satellite link to the Internet. “Previously, I was paying ₹12,000 to ₹15,000 during the main [tourist] season,” Mr. Lall said. He recalled that even credit card payments would often not go through.

“Now, I am paying 10% of what I used to pay for ten times the speed,” he said. Mr. Lall had switched over to Airtel, the only other firm that currently offers fixed line broadband in the Union Territory, with two terabytes of data available at high speed. Mr. Lall’s guests managed to hit that data limit in February, he said, reflecting the change in access in an archipelago where tourists have so far been warned to expect limited Internet access.

Telcos have collectively purchased over 70 GBPS of bandwidth from the system as of March, the USOF disclosed. Tariffs payable to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) were high in the first year (after a brief period where access to the cable system was offered as a free trial), but were slashed in 2021 up to half their previous rate, if telcos were willing to commit to long-term purchases. These changes were outlined in tariff orders made available by the USOF.