A cable landing station in Bengal, India, is set to be operational in Q1 2026.
First reported by the Times of India, the landing station will be located in Digha, East Midnapore.
It will be East India’s first cable landing station. All of the region’s existing connectivity is routed through Chennai, to the southeast, or Mumbai, to the west.
Reliance Jio is the main landing partner for the project.
The news was shared by Amit Mitra, principal chief advisor to the Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Mitra said the cable landing station will form a “new IT backbone” in the region, boosting the local economy in the state.
The West Bengal Cable Landing Policy 2023 set out plans for the state government to develop 10 landing stations along the coastline by 2025. This project will be the first to launch.
He added that Bengal had been working on updating IT policies for the last few years. Other policies have included the Broadband Policy of 2020 which saw the investment of Rs 7500 crore ($895m) into the telecom sector and the 2021 Data Centre Policy which has seen the development of 11 new data center facilities.
NTT, NexGen, Nxtra by Airtel, Tata Telecom, and CtrlS all have a presence in the state of West Bengal.
West Bengal will also be home to the Bengal Silicon Valley Tech Hub, expected to be completed in 2025. More than 41 companies have already bought land in the tech hub, including Adani Enterprises, which is building a hyperscale data center across 51 acres. The tech hub will be closely located to the new cable landing station.
