The Chennai-Andaman and Nicobar Island (CANI) Submarine Cable System is a critical piece of national infrastructure, defined as a Submarine Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) connectivity project. Its creation was approved on September 21, 2016, to solve the problem of limited bandwidth and high latency in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which previously relied on a slow satellite link.
The system works by laying a 2,312 km long optical fibre cable on the seabed, connecting Chennai on the mainland to Port Blair and seven other islands: Swaraj Dweep (Havelock), Long Island, Rangat, Little Andaman (Hutbay), Kamorta, Car Nicobar, and Great Nicobar (Campbell Bay). The main segment from Chennai to Port Blair has a capacity of 2 x 200 Gbps (400 Gbps), with the inter-island segments having a capacity of 2 x 100 Gbps. This mechanism dramatically increased the initial bandwidth availability to 400 Gbps, which was nearly 100 times the existing capacity of 3.2 Gbps.
The project was commissioned between August 2020 and September 2020, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi launching it on August 10, 2020. The total cost was Rs. 1224 Cr, with the capital expenditure of Rs. 948 Cr funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) was appointed as the Project Execution Agency (PEA) and maintains the system, while the work was awarded to M/s NEC Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.. The bandwidth is made available to all Telecom Service Providers, such as Airtel and Jio, ensuring it functions as a neutral infrastructure. The CANI system is a domestic submarine cable, connecting it to the broader Digital India and National Broadband Mission concepts, and it also meets the strategic communication requirements of the country's defence forces.