Tata Communications announced plans on 26 October to invest close to $450 million in cables linking India’s AI data-centre corridors and build around 10,000 kilometres of long-haul fibre, Reuters reported. The Indian company, which sells data connections and cybersecurity services to enterprises, plans to connect cloud providers and other organisations to clusters of data centres.
Key points
- Tata Communications plans to deploy up to $450 million over three to five years.
- The first phase will connect Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai.
- The company is targeting a 30 to 40 percent share of data centre-to-data centre connectivity.
- An executive said customer discussions are advanced, but contracts for the network have not yet been announced.
Mumbai–Chennai corridor starts the fibre build
The company describes the proposed network as India’s “AI Super Highway”. It plans to spend $400 million to $450 million on the project, CNBC-TV18 reported. Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, Tata Communications’ managing director and chief executive, said the roughly 10,000 km of new fibre would connect to its global network backbone.
The first phase runs through Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai. Later phases cover east-coast and western India data-centre areas, including Vizag, Bhubaneswar, Jamnagar and GIFT City. Tata Communications also plans to connect the corridors and data-centre clusters to international cable landing stations.
The investment is planned over three to five years, Rupesh Chokshi, executive vice president and global business head for network services, told Moneycontrol. He said Tata Communications would prioritise routes according to projected traffic, capacity needs and the pace at which data centres are developed.
Hyderabad is also the site of a Microsoft cloud-region launch positioned as an AI hub for Asia and the Global South. Tata Communications’ proposed first phase would put the city on a long-haul route between other Indian data-centre locations.
Tata Communications targets data-centre customers
The network is aimed at hyperscalers, neocloud providers, digital-native businesses, global capability centres and enterprises. Tata Communications also plans links for cloud services firms and organisations such as banks that need connections to data-centre clusters.
Lakshminarayanan said a growing portion of the expansion was backed by anchor customer commitments, CNBC-TV18 reported. Chokshi said Tata Communications was in advanced discussions with customers but had not yet announced contracts for the proposed network, according to Moneycontrol. The commitments and the customer discussions therefore sit alongside a build planned across several phases, rather than a reported roster of contracts for the full network.
The project is intended to link data centres to one another as well as connect customers to them. Chokshi told Moneycontrol that Tata Communications was targeting a 30 to 40 percent share of data centre-to-data centre connectivity as it built the capacity. That target depends on the rollout and on customers taking up the connections along the routes the company chooses to build.
Lakshminarayanan puts connectivity market above $1 billion
Lakshminarayanan said he expected India’s data centre-to-data centre connectivity market to exceed $1 billion over the medium term, CNBC-TV18 reported. His estimate describes the market Tata Communications is pursuing, while Chokshi’s 30 to 40 percent figure is the company’s target share of the work it believes it can pursue as capacity is built.
The spending plan places the construction cost with Tata Communications. Chokshi’s account of how corridors will be selected ties the timing of that spending to traffic projections, required capacity and data-centre development. Those are also the conditions on which the planned routes can attract the customers the company is pursuing.
Tata Communications shares were trading 1.2 percent higher at ₹1,674.2 apiece on 26 October. The shares had declined 7.6 percent in 2026 up to that point.
