Lightstorm and Microsoft Lead Consortium for I-2SEA Submarine Cable

A consortium led by Lightstorm has signed contracts to construct the I-2SEA submarine cable system, a massive undersea project designed to link India's east coast with Malaysia and Singapore. The system provides the high-capacity connectivity required to support the rapid expansion of AI data centers across the Asia-Pacific region.

The I-2SEA cable will span approximately 3,600 kilometers. The consortium consists of Lightstorm, which serves as the majority owner, alongside Microsoft, Singtel, and Tata Communications. The system is expected to be ready-for-service (RFS) by the fourth quarter of 2029. NEC Corporation has been appointed as the system supplier, while ASEAN Cableship Pte Ltd (ACPL) will handle the marine installation.

Infrastructure and Redundancy

To ensure reliability and low-latency access to major technology hubs such as Hyderabad, the system will utilize two distinct landing stations on India's east coast: Machilipatnam and South Chennai. This dual-landing strategy provides critical redundancy, protecting the network from single points of failure. The project is specifically engineered to bridge India's growing GPU clusters with the cloud networks and "AI factories" located in Southeast Asia.

Amajit Gupta, Group CEO and Managing Director of Lightstorm, stated that AI regions across India, Malaysia, and Singapore will be connected by a single, purpose-built, end-to-end system engineered for the performance and scale that AI infrastructure requires.

The AI Connectivity Imperative

This project arrives as AI workloads create an unprecedented demand for massive, jitter-sensitive data transfers. Training large-scale models and running real-time inference requires dedicated high-capacity corridors to move data between distributed GPU clusters and cloud environments. By creating a direct path between these regions, the I-2SEA system allows hyperscalers and GPU providers to scale their cross-border capacity dynamically.

Integrating with Lightstorm's SmartNet AI Fabric, the cable aims to bypass congested maritime zones, reducing the risk of latency spikes and bottlenecks. This infrastructure is a critical component in the broader buildout of AI capacity in the region, enabling more efficient collaboration between India's compute hubs and Singapore's established cloud ecosystem.

Future Outlook

As the project moves toward its 2029 completion date, the industry will be watching how this dedicated AI corridor impacts the cost and speed of deploying cross-border AI services. While the core infrastructure plan is set, the full operational capacity and the specific volume of traffic it will handle remain to be seen as the GPU clusters it serves continue to evolve.