Chennai-Andaman & Nicobar Islands Cable (CANI)

Overview

The Chennai-Andaman & Nicobar Islands Cable, commonly known as CANI, is a domestic submarine cable system operated entirely within India. Spanning approximately 2,300 kilometres, it connects the Indian mainland to the remote Andaman and Nicobar island chain in the Bay of Bengal. The cable provides dedicated submarine connectivity to a group of islands that are geographically isolated from the mainland, linking nine landing points across the territory.

Route and Landings

In India, CANI lands at a total of nine locations. On the mainland, the cable comes ashore at Chennai, in the state of Tamil Nadu. Across the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, landings are distributed across multiple islands: Car Nicobar, Great Nicobar, Havelock, Kamorta, Little Andaman, Long Island, Rangat, and Sri Vijaya Puram. These landings serve communities and administrative centres spread across the archipelago.

Ownership and Operators

CANI is wholly owned and operated by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), India's state-owned telecommunications provider. As a government enterprise under the Ministry of Communications, BSNL manages telecommunications infrastructure across the country, including in remote and underserved regions.

Status and Timeline

The cable was declared ready for service in 2020 and is currently in service. Its completion brought modern high-capacity submarine connectivity to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, replacing or supplementing older, more limited communication links to the archipelago.

Regional Context

India's coastline connects to numerous international submarine cable systems, including large intercontinental systems such as 2Africa, Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1), SeaMeWe-6, Europe India Gateway (EIG), IMEWE, and the planned Project Waterworth — all of which measure in the tens of thousands of kilometres and serve transoceanic routes. CANI, by contrast, is a comparatively short domestic system at 2,300 kilometres, purpose-built to serve internal national connectivity rather than international traffic exchange. Its nine landing points across a single island group reflect its focused, intra-national character.

Strategic Role

By connecting Chennai to eight separate island landing points in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, CANI establishes direct submarine fibre links between the Indian mainland and an archipelago situated far into the Bay of Bengal. The distribution of landings across multiple islands — including Great Nicobar near the southern tip of the chain and smaller communities such as Havelock, Rangat, and Long Island — means that connectivity is not concentrated at a single point but is instead distributed across the island territory. This structure, under unified ownership by BSNL, supports telecommunications access across one of India's most geographically dispersed union territories.