Airtel, Meta to boost India’s digital ecosystem

NEW DELHI: In a bid to support the growth of India's digital ecosystem, Bharti Airtel and Meta (formerly Facebook) on Monday announced a key collaboration.

Airtel partners with Meta and STC (Saudi Telecom Company) to bring 2Africa Pearls to India as part of its ongoing effort to improve the nation's infrastructure.

2Africa is the world's longest subsea cable system and is expected to provide faster internet connectivity to nearly 3 billion people worldwide.

"With our contributions to the 2Africa cable and Open RAN, we are investing in crucial and progressive connectivity infrastructure which is needed to support the increasing demand for high-speed data in India. We look forward to working closely with Meta to deliver best-in-class digital experiences to our customers in India," Vani Venkatesh, CEO, Global Business, Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

Both companies will jointly invest in global connectivity infrastructure and CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) based new-age digital solutions to support the emerging requirements of customers and enterprises in the country.

"We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Airtel to further advance the region's connectivity infrastructure that will enable a better network experience for people and businesses across India," Francisco Varela, vice president of mobile partnerships for Meta said in a statement.

The company said that it will integrate Meta's WhatsApp within its CPaaS platform.

With this integration, businesses will be able to use WhatsApp's extensive features and reach to provide enterprises with unparalleled omnichannel customer engagement.