India's Next Strategic Opportunity Lies Beneath The Ocean | The Reason Why

A few days ago, a Chinese vessel was lurking around Taiwan. The speed was unusually slow, raising suspicion. So did its route. It moved along the path of the US-Taiwan undersea cable. According to maritime analysis platform Windward, "slow-speed movement over critical undersea infrastructure is one of the clearest behavioural signals in maritime intelligence." It wasn't the first such incident. Chinese-flagged vessels have been linked to several cable incidents in recent years, including suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea and damage to cables around Taiwan.

The internet was built on the idea of openness — the free flow of information, open access, and the undersea cables that made both possible. For decades, countries treated those cables as shared global utilities. That has changed. Today, they see them as strategic infrastructure, much like semiconductors, rare earths, ports and energy pipelines.

Understanding Undersea Cable Systems

Around 600 undersea cable systems run nearly 1.5 million kilometres across the ocean floor.

The hard part is building and laying them. Only four companies produce these cables at scale: France's Alcatel Submarine Networks, America's SubCom, Japan's NEC and China's HMN Technologies. HMN sells its cables at prices 20–30% lower than the others, which is why many developing countries choose it. But Western governments have raised concerns about security and surveillance risks. In several Asia–Pacific projects, the US even stepped in to block HMN bids, or push consortium members toward SubCom through grants and diplomatic pressure.

Telecom companies own and lease most of the cable capacity. Big Tech has joined them, and firms like Google and Meta now run their own systems.

The repair fleet is the other critical piece. Geopolitics has pushed its importance up. There are about 60 repair ships worldwide. In normal conditions, they take around 40 days to fix a fault. Wars can stretch that timeline to several months.

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How Geopolitics Changed It

For over a century, countries have targeted undersea communication cables. In 1914, Britain cut Germany's overseas telegraph cables within hours of declaring war. During the Cold War, the US tapped Soviet undersea military cables under Operation Ivy Bells. Cut to 2024, damaged cables had disrupted internet traffic between Asia, Europe and Africa, with one cable taking five months to repair because of the conflict in the Red Sea.

Iran added a new layer of pressure. It wants to charge fees on cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz and even control their repair and maintenance. Iran cites Article 79 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which allows coastal countries to set conditions for cables entering their territorial waters. It also points to Egypt charging transit and licensing fees for cables passing through the Suez Canal.

Thus, this infrastructure is becoming a target for espionage, sabotage and geopolitical pressure.

Challenges India Faces

Seven international cable systems pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Four of them carry critical traffic to and from India. A disruption here would hit banking, financial markets, energy operations, military communications and India's IT industry. Mostafa Ahmed of the Al Habtoor Research Centre estimates that a 24‑hour outage could cost India's IT and services sector up to $920 million.

That said, India's cable ecosystem has some weaknesses too.

India operates around 18 international cable systems and 23 landing points. Singapore, despite being smaller than Mumbai, hosts nearly 30. The deeper issue is concentration. Roughly 95% of India's cables land near Versova in Mumbai, creating a single point of failure for the country's international bandwidth.

Tata Communications, Airtel, Reliance Jio, Sify and BSNL run landing stations and invest in cable consortia. But India does not manufacture submarine cables. It does not build cable‑laying ships or operate repair vessels. It relies on Singapore and Dubai-based companies for repairs, while spare cables are stored in Sri Lanka.

The Tortoise Speed

There's some good news for India though. Google is building the America‑India Connect project, and Microsoft is backing Lightstorm's I‑2SEA cable linking India with Southeast Asia.

The government policies are shifting too. Last year, the Department of Telecommunications designated subsea cables as critical infrastructure. The Quad has kept cable resilience on its agenda and launched the Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience in 2023. Quad stands for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, an informal strategic forum consisting of Australia, India, Japan, and the US. But, as the Carnegie Endowment notes, most meaningful cooperation has come through bilateral or trilateral work rather than the Quad as a whole. The Australia‑India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership is one example.

India hosted its first International Subsea Cable Systems Conference in 2025. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) have recommended building an indigenous cable‑repair fleet, but no action has been taken yet.

Progress is happening, but it remains slow.

Final Take

The same geopolitical tensions that disrupted oil pipelines and shipping lanes are now reaching the internet.

Today, India is more of a user of this ecosystem than a builder. But that can change. By expanding its role, India can build new businesses and strengthen its geopolitical influence across the Indian Ocean. That starts with more cable landing points beyond Mumbai, its own cable repair and installation fleet, and stronger partnerships with other countries.

The next geopolitical contest won't just be about who controls data or who builds AI models. It will also be about who builds, owns and protects the infrastructure that carries it.

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