In November 2026 the Broadband India Forum (BIF) urged the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to harden India's subsea cable resilience. According to trade-press summaries of the statement, its asks include an Indian-flagged cable repair ship, possibly funded through a public-private partnership or the Digital Bharat Nidhi, a large expansion in cable landing stations, a 30-day approval window for new landing stations, and a 7-day window for repair-vessel clearances. We could not read the statement itself, so the specifics below are as reported, and the exact date is unconfirmed. DoT is separately reported to be building a single-window portal for repair clearances.
The strongest case for a national repair ship
The argument for state-backed capacity is serious. India sits on a handful of chokepoints. Nearly 95 percent of its international traffic to Europe, Africa and West Asia rides undersea cables, and at least 13 of its 18 intercontinental cables come ashore within about six kilometres of Versova in Mumbai, according to Free Press Journal's September 2026 reporting on BIF and Takshashila Institution figures. When a cable breaks, repair ships must come from abroad. Takshashila's Anwesha Sen told the paper that every fault in Indian waters relies on foreign vessels based in Dubai or Singapore. Private operators will not build a ship that sits idle most of the year, so a classic public-goods argument applies: resilience is worth more to the country than to any single consortium.
The September 2025 Red Sea cuts showed the stakes. Microsoft warned Azure customers of higher latency and said "undersea fiber cuts can take time to repair", while NetBlocks reported degraded connectivity in India and Pakistan. Reported Indian repair times of three to five months, as relayed in coverage of the BIF ask, leave little margin if a second fault hits.
The idea is not new, and that matters
A flagged vessel was already on the table three years ago. After a DoT reference, TRAI opened a consultation on submarine cable landing on 23 December 2022 and issued recommendations in June 2023. As TelecomTalk summarised them, TRAI proposed that a committee of government and major operators study financial models for Indian-flagged repair vessels, and that existing repair operators in the subcontinent be encouraged to reflag and relocate to Indian ports. Light Reading reported that TRAI also wanted landing stations and cable repair treated as essential services, with customs and GST relief for repair items.
So the BIF request is a revival of an unfinished recommendation. The gap between recommendation and action is itself the finding: the binding constraint has been process, not ideas.
Where the delay actually sits
BIF chair Aruna Sundararajan told Free Press Journal that a single landing station can need around 50 clearances across at least 16 ministries, and that planning a new cable takes three to four years before laying begins. Those are permitting delays, and they apply to repairs too. A vessel that is two weeks away but waits days for an entry or operating clearance is not saved by a flag. The 7-day clearance window and the reported DoT single-window portal address the cheapest, fastest part of the problem. They need no shipyard, no subsidy and no new asset to maintain.
A ship, by contrast, is a multi-year capital commitment with uncertain utilisation. One vessel based on India's west coast would still need to sail to faults on the east coast, in the Red Sea or in the Bay of Bengal, and could be on another job when a fault occurs. Flagging also does not guarantee crews, spares and cable stock. If the goal is lower mean time to repair, a ship helps only after clearances stop being the bottleneck.
Concentration is the bigger risk
The forum's call for many more landing stations goes to a real weakness. India holds only around 21 landing stations and about 3 percent of the world's submarine cables, per the BIF figures reported by Free Press Journal, and 11 of its 18 international cables are over 20 years old. Landing diversity along the 7,800-kilometre coastline lowers the chance that one storm, anchor drag or sabotage event takes out a large share of capacity.
Still, the target should be diversity, not a headline multiple. "Ten times more" is a number to test against demand and security review, not a quota. Pre-cleared coastal sites with environmental and coastal-zone approvals done once, plus predictable deadlines, would attract private capital without the state choosing locations. Treating landing infrastructure as essential, as TRAI recommended, should come with real obligations on operators to share repair information and maintain spares.
A proportionate sequence
The policy should proceed in order of cost and speed:
- Deliver the single window first. Publish service levels for repair-vessel clearances, with the 7-day window as a hard deadline and deemed approval if missed.
- Pre-clear landing sites. Do environmental and coastal approvals once, then let operators bid for plots on a 30-day track.
- Test the ship business case in public. Publish the utilisation, funding and crewing analysis TRAI proposed in 2023 before committing Digital Bharat Nidhi money, which is meant for universal service, not commercial ship operations.
- Prefer standby contracts. A subsidised priority-access arrangement with an existing repair operator may deliver most of the benefit at lower cost than owning a vessel.
A flagged repair ship may well be justified. But if India builds it before fixing clearances, it will own a very expensive asset that waits in the same queue as everyone else's.