Airtel along with 15 other telecom majors have signed a formal construction and maintenance agreement to build the EIG which is the first direct, high-bandwidth optical-fibre submarine cable system, Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

"The cable system from India to United Kingdom will cost more than $ 700 million and significantly enhance capacity and diversity to connect India to the Middle East and Europe," the statement added.

The 15,000-km (9,000-mile) cable system would connect 13 countries across three continents and is expected to carry commercial traffic by second quarter 2010.

Airtel is the only Indian service provider to be a part of this consortium, and would be operating the cable landing station in Mumbai.

The other members of EIG cable consortium are AT&T, BT, C&W, Djibouti Telecom, Du, Gibtelecom, IAM, Libyan Telecom, MTN Group Ltd., Omantel, PT Comunicacoes-S.A, Saudi Telecom Company, Telecom Egypt, Telkom SA Ltd and Verizon Business.

The EIG consortium has signed construction and supply agreements with Alcatel-Lucent and Tyco Telecommunications.

Beyond the Airtel cable landing station in India, additional cable landings would be provided in United Kingdom, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, Monaco, France, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman and United Arab Emirates.

Bharti Airtel currently has two international landing stations in Chennai that connect its two existing submarine cable systems - i2i to Singapore and SEA-ME-WE-4 to Europe, and is building an additional cable landing station in Mumbai to land the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable.