Kadmat, India

Kadmat, India: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Kadmat is a coral island in the Amindivi subgroup of the Lakshadweep archipelago, situated off the southwestern coast of India in the Arabian Sea. As one of the smaller and more remote island territories of India, Kadmat serves as a submarine cable landing point, hosting one submarine cable that connects it to the Indian mainland. The cable landing here forms part of an intra-national corridor linking the Lakshadweep island chain to the Indian coast.

The single submarine cable landing at Kadmat operates entirely within Indian territory, providing a domestic connectivity link between the archipelago and mainland India. This positions Kadmat as a node in a broader inter-island and island-to-mainland network rather than an intercontinental or international submarine cable corridor.

Cables Landing at Kadmat

Kochi-Lakshadweep Islands (KLI-SOFC) is the submarine cable landing at Kadmat. Spanning a total route length of 1,989 kilometres, this cable was due for ready-for-service (RFS) in 2024, though it carries a draft status. As its name indicates, the cable connects Kochi on the Indian mainland to multiple islands of the Lakshadweep archipelago, with all endpoints located within India. Kadmat is one of several island landing points served by this system, which collectively extends submarine cable connectivity across the scattered islands of Lakshadweep.

Regional Context

Within India's submarine cable landscape, Kadmat is one of 26 landing points across the country that together host 21 submarine cables. With a single cable, Kadmat sits alongside fellow Lakshadweep island landing points such as Agatti, Amini, and Andrott, each of which also hosts one cable. This contrasts with major mainland hubs such as Mumbai, which hosts 18 cables, and Chennai, which hosts 9, underscoring the difference in scale between large coastal metropolitan landing points and remote island terminals.

Network Role

Kadmat functions as a single-cable terminus within the Kochi-Lakshadweep Islands system, enabling submarine connectivity between this coral island and the Indian mainland. Its role is specifically one of domestic inter-island connectivity, extending network reach into a geographically dispersed archipelago that would otherwise depend entirely on satellite or radio-based communications. The cable it hosts does not link India to any foreign territory but instead serves the internal geographic challenge of connecting remote island communities across open water.

In the regional submarine cable graph, Kadmat represents one of several parallel island endpoints on the same cable system, collectively demonstrating how a single long-route domestic cable can address the connectivity requirements of multiple small and isolated island landing points across the Lakshadweep archipelago.