Daybreak - Meta to get the world’s longest internet cable to India. It’s 100% exposed

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

On a Wednesday morning in April, The Ken's Mrunmayee Kulkarni went to Rushikonda beach in Visakhapatnam looking for a manhole. She found it — a concrete chamber with a reinforced lid, no armed guard, no exclusion zone, no legal protection. In a few years, it will be one of the landing points for the world's longest undersea cable.95% of India's internet — every payment, every message, a $341 billion services economy — runs through cables like this. The nearest repair ship is in Singapore. There is no protection law. And 60% of that traffic runs through a war zone.What happens if something goes wrong?Tune in.Read Mrunmayee's story here.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

It's in April morning at Rushi Konda Beach in Vishaka Putnam. My colleague, the Kenraporter, Murmai Gulkarni, is strolling along the beach looking for something specific. The area is buzzing with tourists, trying to catch a wave, and nearby fisherwomen are waiting for their husbands to return with the day's catch. It looks like any other beach day. What Mrunma is looking for is a manhole, because in a few years, this, exact beach will be one of the landing points for Meta's project Waterworth, the world's longest undersea cable connecting India directly to the US, Brazil and South Africa for the first time. And it will come ashore right here, the same way that all the others have threw a manhole

into a nondescript landing station. On the other side of those cables running thousands of kilometers across the ocean floor is 95% of everything that you do on the internet, your messages, your payments, and your cloud. India's entire services export economy, in fact, worth over $340 billion depends on them. Brunmi found the manhole finally. And what she did find around it, or rather what was not there, is what today's episode is about. Muran Mai also went to Mumbai where six cables

already come ashore at Versova Beach which remains, in her words, a free-for-all public beach. Miramai is our guest today on the podcast and here is how she explains what's at stake. They are roughly the width of a garden hose, okay? They are unburrowed. They're just sort of lying on the seabed

and they carry important data, you know, like every swift payment, every stock trade, WhatsApp message you're sending, every cloud operation happens through these cables. Also, I mean, there are at least 150 to 200 cable incidents per year. Most of them are accidental, okay? And this was before conflicts actually began. So there is a rising concern that people might deliberately try to disrupt undersea cable networks kind of causing countries and areas to black out. Also, once damaged, the median repair time for these cables is like 40.

days. If you are in a conflict zone, that time sort of becomes longer. And disruption, it usually costs operators like $1.5 million an hour. So that's pricey. Yep. Last September, in fact, brought this right home. Four cables were severed near Jeddah, likely from anchor drags. Next thing we knew, India's internet traffic to Europe slowed by 30% for weeks. And there were no Indian ships to fix it and no repair depot closer than Sri. This was before the conflict in West Asia deepened. About 60% of India's internet traffic still moves through that region. So in today's conversation, Drunmi and Rachel get into how this infrastructure actually

works, what India's real exposure looks like and whether anybody is going to do something about it before something forces the issue. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nickda Sharma, and I don't chase the new cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rachel Vargis and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Tuesday, the 12th of me. So you wrote this story about how META is putting an undersea cable for India's internet connection

and how it's 100% exposed. That's pretty much in the title. But you also went to WISAC and Versova, which is where a lot of the story is based, right? So can you tell us a little bit about what these cables look like on those beaches since you were there? Curious thing I noticed on those beaches is that in spite of undersea cables carrying such important information, they literally carry the world's internet. The way they land on beaches is actually very, very inconspicuous.

What you can see on the beaches is just a beach manhole. So it's a concrete chamber. It has a reinforced lid. there's a warning sign, sometimes there's a very low fence around it. So at Versova and Mumbai, about six cables come ashore on a public beach, by the way. It's very easy to miss it unless you kind of, you know, like, unless you know exactly what you're looking for. Also, people walk past it every day. So just it's very, it's very, very muted over there. Behind the beach panhole cover somewhere inland, there is usually a cable landing station where the cable

connects to the terrestrial network, the network that's there on the land. And even there, there is no armed guard, there is no exclusion zone. There's no legal protection saying any of this must, you know, be treated carefully, protected, things like that. I see. That's so interesting. And you said there are six on the Warsaw Beach, right? So like, where are the other cables location? And could you also just quickly explain what these cables do and mean for India? So right now, India has quite a few undersea cable landing on its beaches. If you, I mean, if you look at the story, there's a very, very cool interactive map that we have put in the story where you can click on the little lines that run through and they'll tell you exactly which wire comes through to where it's really pretty, please check it out. And these cables, essentially an undersea cable is a fiber optic cable. It's about the same thickness as a garden hose. And within it, there are layers of insulation and data is transmitted through light, which reflects and refracts.

of the surfaces of the inner surfaces of the cables, and that's how it sort of transmits data. I would say about 95 to 99% of international internet traffic goes through these cables. That is actually an important piece of infrastructure. Right, I see. So you opened the story about how META has this project waterworth, and that's supposed to land on India's beaches

and it's supposed to join this existing network of cables, right, in a couple years. but it's also, so I wanted to ask, is it specifically for Meta's operations or does it serve like a broader purpose with regards to Internet connectivity? Yeah, so the Waterworth cable, which incidentally is going to be the world's longest undersea cable, it'll be like 50,000 kilometers and it'll connect India, US, Brazil, South Africa, it's a big one. It is owned by Meta but it's not exclusively for Meta's use. So an undersea cable generally has a company that is laying the cable and it has a landing. partner where, you know, it lands on the beach. So SIFI Technologies is META's landing partner. And it operates a very open career neutral CLS, which means that any operator, any career,

and any cloud company can sort of buy capacity on it. Its primary purpose would be to diversify meta's own connectivity apart from conflict zone routes like the Red Sea and the Gulf and the South China Sea, but really anyone can usually use it. Right. And you mentioned how like these cables were cut in September, I think, because of anchors or something like that. So before the crisis started happening. And it cost like a, you know, slowdown of 30% of India's traffic, right? So, you know, like in a situation like this, apart from the fact that it takes 40 days, what is exactly the procedure to fix and maintain these cables?

And also, how is India taking care of them? Okay. So right now, as we know, the Red Sea and the Strait. of hummers are smacked up in the middle of the ongoing West Asia War. And the incident you're referring through from last September, the cables were severed near Jeddah and Saudi Arabia. They are saying that it was likely an unexpected anchor drag over there. The result was a 30% slowdown in internet connectivity between India and Europe,

which lasted sort of weeks for it. As to what India is specifically doing right now, we don't have cable repair ships of our own right now. So when a cable is cut, specialized ships sort of sails to the fault location. It halts the cable up from the seabed using grapnels. And it splices the damage section and it kind of lowers it back down.

Basically, it's a repair thing. It takes a very long time. Our nearest repair depot is in Gaul in Sri Lanka. It's run by a Singaporean company. And which means the repair ships are based in Singapore and Dubai and they are operated by international consortiums. So we pay for fuel and we pay for mobilization and we are also paying in waiting time incidentally. So that's kind of how we are dealing with things.

Wow. So that's, you know, how 95% of what we do on the internet is dependent on these cables, right? Not specifically the ones from the state of homeos, but in general, these undersea cables. And this is how, you know, we are maintaining them. That's, you know, kind of confusing that that's the case. But so before we get into, you know, know why India, India's response to this is, you know, kind of muted. What are some of the other countries doing in situations like this?

Okay, so here are a few examples. The UK, it operates something called RFA Proteus. It's a dedicated vessel for underwater surveillance and cable protection. Australia, which has some of the strongest undersea cable legislations have seen, they passed a cable projection legislation way back in 2005. and NATO, it has launched Operation Baltic Sentry after 11 cables were severed in the Baltic between October 2023 and Jan 2025. And they usually have patrols, maritime surveillance. Cables basically in these examples are treated as strategic assets, which is something that we're not clearly doing.

I see. So that's a little concerning. But you also cover in the story about how the threat to these cables is not just, you know, like accidental, like some, like whatever happened in September. or also what might happen during the war right now in the state of Homo. But you also wrote about this incident where a Chinese submarine was detected as being too close to India's cables. And that did create, you know, like a sort of panic. And considering that we also fear like intentional tampering or sabotage, and since we're so dependent on these cables, why hasn't India, no, why doesn't India already have some sort of framework to maintain them? So basically that incident you're referring to was, like last year, China's Geelong submersible, it can reach a depth of like 7,000 meters.

It was detected in areas where Indian cables run. And theoretically, a submersible with manipulator arms could reach and damage a cable. And like we've established in India, we wouldn't really, you know, have the means to do that quickly. The problem is that if we class-classes, classify these as critical national infrastructure. It would trigger like mandatory protection standards, monitoring obligations. And it feels like, you know, that is a Pandora's box, which the system is kind of avoiding doing. I mean, one of the officials at the Department of Telecom, who I spoke to, said that once you declare something as critical, you can't really, you have to also demonstrate

how it's being secured, which is what we're not doing right now. Also, the cables are privately owned and they are internationally operated. So there's no one single ministry which is in charge of the problem. So the problem is also that the budget doesn't sit cleanly anywhere. It doesn't lie with the defense. It doesn't lie with the telecom. It doesn't lie with the ports. So yeah, that's kind of a problem. So the stranded cables basically, one of them is called two Africa pearls. It's the extension of Meta's two Africa system. It's designed to connect the Gulf states, Pakistan and India. It was supposed to land in India earlier in this year. So contractor, Alcatore. submarine networks, it declared force majeure on March 12.

And their ship, Ildebats, is, it's sitting in Damand right now with the unfinished end of the cable on its deck. The other one was the S-C-A-M-E-W-E-6. It was India's next major European corridor. It's already been delayed from 2024 to mid-20207 because the US contractor for, because the US forced a contractor change because they kind of pushed Huawei Marine out and they got in subcom over security concerns. So now obviously there is more uncertainty because of the war.

So the compounding consequence of this is that the repair ships already deployed to fix the 2025 cuts have been forced to suspend operations indefinitely to existing damage. So new cables can't be laid and the repair window keeps sort of extending. It took like half a year to repair the four cables cut in February 24 and now with both the choke points closed that timeline. could be definitely worse. Waterworth incidentally is kind of a long-term answer because it was designed to bypass all the sensitive choke points but again it won't be ready till 2030. But I'm just wondering is the 2030 timeline next? Is it a little optimistic considering like

if the war continues or other disruptions happen then what happens then? Well essentially considering that there is no infrastructure for the cables to there's no much infrastructure for the cables to be built on land. And the fact that Meta would definitely want to push this project through seeing as most of its others are stranded in like conflict zones and this one bypasses it. I would say the 2030 timeline is pretty feasible. The problem again is that we are doing exactly what we've always been doing. We are laying cables and we are wiring ourselves to the world much faster than we can protect the wires. WISIC isn't really that far away from say China or any other conflict-ridden zone that we are from and a submersible could damage the cable, a wrongly

placed anchor could maybe mess it up. So the problem isn't that, you know, whether the cables will come. The problem is, okay, how do we protect them once they're here? Okay, so speaking of protecting these cables once they're here, you do refer to this confidential study from the PSU Telecommunications Consultants India Limited, which has proposed a solution for this exactly. So, what are these solutions that they've, you know, like, recommended and are they physical, feasible, practically speaking, and if they are, then why haven't, why haven't we started on them? So the TCIL study, it proposes spending about 3,000 to 4,000 crore rupees to build an indigenous cable repair capacity. Basically, what they are going to do is they're going to retrofit

two existing Navy vessels called the Nistar and the Nipun. And they're going to fit them with maybe systems, little robots and things which could dive down and fix the cables. And actually, there's a report in June 2025 by a retired Navy admiral who said that these ships had most of the capabilities required for cable repair if specialized kits were added. The problem over here is that these vessels are diving support ships, which means they're limited to like a few hundred meters with saturation divings. Our cables sit at like 3,000 to 6,000 meters. So the solution, quite literally, it does not reach the problem over here.

There are other solutions on the table. So there is a purpose-built cable repair ship proposal. It would cost like $200 to $400 million. It would take three to four years to build. But, you know, that could be more effective. There's also a consortium model which involves splitting the cost between the government, the telecoms and the hyperscalers. Okay.

So obviously there are alignment problems with the consortium thing. Like private players would want returns on it. not they wouldn't want like stand by capacity. So none of it has been approved. There are still committee meetings going on, but there are solutions there. Right. And like there seems to be quite a few solutions out there

because you also mention how Australia and India have a dedicated bilateral dialogue on cable security and that Australia has actually offered up its own framework as a template to India while these conversations have been going on. So two questions. Why is there this relationship with Australia specifically? and is this framework something that could work for India again? Okay, so as to why Australia sort of leads the maritime ecology pillar of the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative,

it has its own cable connectivity and resilience center, so it's pretty good at this. Also, there's a direct commercial connection because Google's cable runs directly from Mumbai to Western Australia. It's the first direct India-Australia cable. So the commercial and strategic technically would be the same end goal in this one. So Australia's 2005 legislation, like I said, it designates protection zones up to 200 nautical miles. It prohibits anchoring and dredging near the cables. It's enforced by a very clear regulatory body. Now, could it work for India?

The model is very, very sound, okay? But like a DOT official I mentioned earlier told me, it's scaling in India is always a challenge because we have a very dense coastline. We have multiple overlapping jurisdiction because we have the central, we have the state, we have the port. We have the port authorities. And obviously, there is a lot of resistance from the industry in the fishing and the shipping sectors. So it's a good model in theory. Whether we can scale it up in India, it does remain to be seen. Aweyer.

Okay. So again, that's not reassuring at all. Like, we've just left 95% of our internet traffic just bare naked in the, you know, in the seas right now. So, but going back to my question earlier and about how this. the China submersible also created some panic here. How immediate exactly is the threat of like intentional sabotage when it comes to these wires? And considering that it's such a glaring, you know, gap in India's security infrastructure right now, like, isn't this something that some country could, you know, take advantage of?

So even though this presents a huge potential security risk, I have to say that cable. have not been directly targeted in the current conflict yet. There have been a lot of news reports saying that, you know, Iran has threatened to cut the undersea cables. As far as I know, no undersea cable has specifically been cut by a country. The more immediate risk and the more boring risk, actually, is the collateral damage from the chaos of war. Basically, when ships are rerouting, they would drop an anchor in unfamiliar waters. So damaged vessels would drift into cable routes. That is kind of what caused the September 2025 cuts.

very expensive cards we talked about. So international sabotage, it's a separate threat and it's a slower burning threat. Like the clearest example we have, like you mentioned, is the Geelong detection in the Arabian Sea. So basically I did speak to this retired signals officer from the Eastern Naval Command. And he said like the operating assumption is very simple. If something is down there and it's near your cable, it's mapping it for future potential action. So the concern isn't an imminent cut right now. It is more raky.

Like, it's mapping operations today enable sabotage tomorrow. In fact, NATO launched the Baltic sentry precisely because the ambiguity between accidental and sabotage became a little confusing in Europe. And we have no equivalent doctrine. So, okay, as the same officer told me, what exists today is more on the lines of reactive vigilance than a proper plan.

to do anything. Got it. Again, not very reassuring. So what would happen if something were to happen to like all the virus in the state of hormones right now? Because that's about 60% of the internet traffic in India right now. So, you know, like what would that look like if, whether it be intentional sabotage or just by accident, what's that going to look like?

So basically, that's a very bleak hypothetical scenario that you, just asked, what if all the cables in the state of home was were to die? Like you said, 60% of our internet traffic runs through this, which also means not just our WhatsApps and our digital payments and things like that, but we also have a $3401 billion services economy and it runs through this infrastructure. A slowdown in this or a sort of cutoff of this would definitely mean a lot in terms of money. And it's not like people haven't addressed. this. In fact, the chairman of Tri, Anil Lahoti, when he was addressing a subsea cables conference last year, he did say that our cable infrastructure falls very short of our digital ambitions.

Not only do we host just one percent of the world's subsea cable landing stations, we have no protection networks around them as, you know, we established. And he, in fact, said that we should treat this as a national security imperative. After that, the government asked operators to sort of draw up risk analysis of the exposure. And there are risk analysis over there, but obviously no action has been taken around it. Well, thank you, Muramai, for that very bleak analysis of my hypothetical question, which is also very bleak, to be fair. But to end this on right now, this is my last question.

So, Mirinda, you also talk about how people's livelihoods would also be affected by stronger legislatures that, you know, protect these cables. like the fishing communities in these coastal areas for instance and also like the larger industries that you know use these waters in that sense so yeah when you were in Vizag in Roshikonda in Warsaw do you speak to any of these people like what is their you know outlook on this kind of infrastructure

yes obviously if we come up with stricter legislation for underwater sea undersea cable protections there would be a little bit of impact on the fishing community and even the private shipping community like I said this is why we can't exactly follow Australia's 2005

legislation because we have a denser coastline we have a busier coastline right now I did speak to the fishing community when I went to Rishikonda over there it was actually a really pretty scene So I was there on Wednesday morning in April, which is a time you should never really go to a beach because it's incredibly hot. And the sun had just sort of risen. And it was still full of tourists.

They were still going into the waters in spite of, you know, there being signs and stuff telling them not to swim into there. And a group of women were hanging out because the husbands had taken the fishing boats out. And I was actually sitting on one of the votes with them and chitchatting with them. One of the women, Rani, she told me that a few months ago, a lot of government, Babu's had come there with their tools and, you know, their surveying and leveling. And she called them the really weird rods, which they used to, you know, map out where the cables would land. And she said, if they built something over here, would we still be able to fish at this spot?

She was worried, you know, maybe they'd have to move somewhere else and her family had been fishing there for generations. But with the legislations that we have right now and with the pace at which things are moving, I don't think Rani has to worry about anything. particularly because there is no protection zone, there is no demarcation, and right now there's no law that will keep her off this beach. So as far as I'm concerned, in 2030, this beach will be one of the two landing points for Meta's waterworth cable. It will be designed to bypass every war zone that is following India's cables right now. And it'll come ashore through a manhole in the sand

and there is no protection zone around it and no repair ship within 2,000 kilometres. So in 2030, Rani will still be there and she'll still be waiting for her husband's fishing. would. Well, I mean, if nothing, I'm glad, you know, Rani and her husband will have, will continue to have a livelihood, thanks to India's very weak legislations that protect 95% of her internet traffic again. But thank you so much, Munme, for coming on this podcast again. Always such a pleasure to have you. Do you want to shout out something else that you're working on or talk about anything along those lines? Again, thank you so much for having me. I think I might be turning into a podcast. because of you guys. Hopefully I'll still be a chic writer. As for what I'm working on now, I think it's going to be a story

which most people would really, really love to read. It's not about undersea cables. It's not about data centers. In fact, it has no mention of AI or tech anywhere in the story. This is a pure urban development story. And I'm going to be writing about why our cities flood along particular lines and what are we doing about it.

especially because we are recording this in Bangalore and we do live in Bangalore, why do our roads get flooded even if we have like 30 minutes of rain? So if you want to find out, please read my next story. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Vargis and edited by Rajiv Sien.