Is India's internet boom running into an undersea problem?

At least 13 of India's 18 intercontinental cables land within roughly six kilometres near Versova beach in Mumbai. These lines carry most of the country's international internet traffic toward Europe, Africa and West Asia, creating a concentrated point of vulnerability.

Experts cited by the BBC say simultaneous damage to several cables would not necessarily take India entirely offline because traffic could be rerouted through Chennai and Kochi. It could still sharply reduce available capacity, increase latency and disrupt service quality.

Even a short slowdown would matter to banks, exchanges, cloud platforms, government networks and emerging AI infrastructure. Specialists therefore argue for more geographically distributed landing points and stronger backup routes.