Tata Comm to Build India’s AI Super Highway with Rs 4,350 Cr Outlay

26 Oct 2026, 11:29 by Vinay Kakkad · KalingaTV

New Delhi: To support India’s accelerating artificial intelligence race, Tata Communications has committed Rs 4,350 crore (equivalent to USD 400–450 million) to construct a dedicated, nationwide optical fibre grid connecting the country’s primary and emerging computing clusters.

Known internally as India’s AI Super Highway, the undertaking will lay approximately 10,000 kilometres of specialised, low-latency, high-speed lines designed to link enterprise networks, cloud platforms, and server hubs across key metropolitan zones.

According to regulatory filings submitted by the digital infrastructure firm, the project will expand Tata Communications’ network capacity by around 6 petabits per second (Pbps) across the period spanning FY2030 through FY2036. The group currently operates on an existing base of 1.25 Pbps, which is already running near full tilt at roughly 70 to 80 per cent utilisation. The company intends to finance the entire multi-year outlay through internal operating cash flows.

The buildout follows an unprecedented boom in domestic compute real estate. Data compiled by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology reveals that India’s operational data centre footprint surged more than fourfold within six years, climbing from 375 megawatts in 2020 to around 1,575 megawatts in 2026. This physical expansion has created an acute operational demand for underlying digital transit corridors capable of moving massive data sets between high-density clusters and overseas networks without latency bottlenecks.

Policy incentives have further accelerated this momentum. Under the Union Budget 2026-27, the central government enacted a long-term tax holiday extending until 2047 for qualified overseas cloud providers hosting international operations out of domestic data centres.

Tata Communications plans to roll out the infrastructure across three distinct phases. Initial deployment will focus on the high-density southern and western tech corridors linking Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai—a belt that serves as the nexus of India’s current hyperscale activity. Later phases will extend into second-tier and industrial growth centres, incorporating GIFT City, Jamnagar, Visakhapatnam, and Bhubaneswar.

Speaking on the strategic timing of the project, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Ganesh Lakshminarayanan observed that the enterprise market for domestic facility-to-facility data links is approaching an inflection point, with the medium-term market size projected to surpass USD 1 billion. He pointed out that the committed capital expenditure leverages Tata Communications’ core infrastructure to establish an expansive interconnection footprint tailored to monetize this demand curve.

Company leadership underscored that artificial intelligence applications place unique structural stresses on standard telecom backbones. Rupesh Chokshi, Executive Vice President, Global Business Head of Network Services, and Chief Product and Technology Officer, noted that sustaining an AI-driven economy demands far more than raw computational cores; it requires underlying transport networks re-engineered specifically for resilience, higher transfer speeds, and scalable volume.

The move synchronizes with an aggressive influx of international and domestic capital targeting Indian digital infrastructure:

Microsoft has committed USD 17.5 billion toward domestic cloud infrastructure, personnel upskilling, and operations, having brought its dedicated Hyderabad data centre region live this past September.
Amazon has earmarked an additional USD 13 billion for its artificial intelligence and cloud roadmap, with a major portion directed at expanding server capacity across Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Google has pledged USD 15 billion to anchor an artificial intelligence development and computing hub in Visakhapatnam.
HyperVault, a data centre subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services, is currently constructing a 1-gigawatt hyperscale campus in Hyderabad, a flagship enterprise projected to draw up to Rs 70,000 crore in combined commitments alongside its partners.

(Source: ANI)