Telecoms giant targets $1bn data centre market with a 10,000 km ultra-high-capacity network connecting key artificial intelligence hubs.
Tata Communications has unveiled plans to invest between $400 million and $450 million over the next three to five years to construct a 10,000-kilometre fibre network across India. Delivering a massive 7.2 petabytes of capacity, the infrastructure is engineered to connect major data centres and artificial intelligence (AI) hubs across the country.
The Tata Group subsidiary described the project as one of India’s largest AI-ready connectivity networks. Once integrated with its global backbone, the network will form an “AI super highway” offering an end-to-end connectivity fabric built to support the high performance, scale, and low latency demanded by next-generation AI workloads.
Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, Managing Director and CEO of Tata Communications, highlighted that the data centre-to-data centre connectivity segment in India could exceed $1 billion over the medium term. “With our planned investments, we are building on our existing strengths to create one of the most comprehensive data centre connectivity platforms in the market… A growing proportion of our expansion is being driven by anchor customer commitments and contracted demand,” Lakshminarayanan noted.
The network roll-out will proceed across three distinct phases. The initial phase focuses on the high-density Mumbai–Pune–Hyderabad–Chennai corridor, serving as a primary gateway for hyperscale growth and subsea cable landing stations. The second phase will link Hyderabad, Vizag, and Chennai. Finally, the third phase will span Bhubaneshwar, Vizag, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Jamnagar, extending optical coverage into emerging Western and East Coast data centre hubs, including GIFT City.
Rupesh Chokshi, Chief Product and Technology Officer, stated that the project will be funded through operating cash flows, backed by $16.4 million (₹1,562 crore) in net operating cash generated in H1 FY27 and $47.1 million (₹4,479 crore) in FY26. For the quarter ending September 2026, the firm logged a net profit of $3.53 million on revenue of $70.6 million.
“Capacity will not be kept captive. This is a commercial-grade, multi-tenant AI superhighway built specifically to be commercialised and leased out via long-term contracts,” Chokshi emphasized, adding that meaningful financial contributions are expected to kick in around FY28–FY29. Discussions are already underway with global hyperscalers, neo-cloud providers, frontier model labs, and large enterprise clients.
The investment arrives as domestic data centre capacity is projected to reach 19 gigawatts (GW) of IT workload, driven by the rise of generative and agentic AI. Building proprietary fibre provides Tata Communications with owner economics, long-term contracted revenues, and an asset lifespan of 25 years.
The terrestrial expansion complements Tata Communications’ global subsea infrastructure, which includes over 500,000 km of subsea optical fibre. Recent additions to the Tata Global Network (TGN) include a planned subsea link between Mumbai and Singapore and consortium participation in a Chennai–Singapore cable scheduled for service in Q4 2029.
