Tata Communications will invest between $400 million and $450 million, about Rs 4,350 crore, to build around 10,000 kilometres of AI-ready fibre across India. The company calls the planned network India’s AI Super Highway, and it is designed to link the country’s main data centre corridors with high speed, low latency connections. Announced on 26 October, the project will be funded through operating cash flows, and the build is expected to run over three to five years.
Demand for links between data centres has grown as companies run more artificial intelligence and cloud workloads. Those workloads move large volumes of data between computing sites, and Tata Communications says older telecom networks were not built for that pattern of traffic. Its answer is a network built for direct links between data centres, with its own service levels and diverse routing.
Managing director and chief executive Ganesh Lakshminarayanan said the market for data centre to data centre connectivity in India could grow beyond $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, positioning us to capture this significant growth opportunity,” he said in a statement.
What the fibre network will connect
Work will proceed in three phases. The first phase covers the Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai corridor, which the company describes as one of India’s most important routes for AI and hyperscale growth. Later phases extend the fibre to emerging data centre hubs on the east coast and in western India, including Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Jamnagar and GIFT City in Gujarat.
Those routes will connect data centre clusters with international cable landing stations. Tata Communications says the new fibre will also join a global network backbone, giving hyperscalers, AI platforms, neocloud providers and enterprises an end to end connection between Indian sites and global AI hubs. The company already operates more than 500,000 kilometres of subsea fibre and more than 200,000 kilometres of terrestrial fibre.
Rupesh Chokshi, chief product and technology officer and executive vice president and global business head for network services, set out the phasing in comments to businessline. “The execution of the fiber network will span a 3 to 5 year rollout horizon. Initial deployment during Phase 1 prioritises the high density Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai route, establishing direct links between key data centre clusters and subsea landing hubs,” he said. Later phases broaden coverage across Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam and Chennai, before stretching further east toward Bhubaneswar and west into Gujarat.
Why fibre capacity matters for AI workloads
Generative and agentic AI workloads place uneven demands on networks. Training runs and live inference both need large transfers between sites, and delays in those transfers slow the whole job. Tata Communications says its network is custom engineered for that kind of traffic, with direct data centre to data centre links, ultra low latency and diverse routing so traffic can move around a fault.
On capacity, the company told businessline the network will provide 7.1 petabytes per second of capacity across the AI super highway, with around 6 petabits per second of added network capacity in FY2030 and FY2036. Tata Communications currently has network capacity of 1.25 petabits per second in India, with utilisation at around 70 to 80 percent.
Chokshi told the Economic Times that the phasing lets the company match spending to customer demand. “We are comfortable in terms of the way we do the phasing; the way we work with our customers, we should be able to manage this,” he said. Asked whether the company would raise funds for the venture, he added: “If we need to eventually do something, we will.” The company has not announced prices for the network, and it has not published prices or named anchor customers.
How the fibre plan fits the wider business
Tata Communications has set its sights on a 30 to 40 percent share of the domestic data centre to data centre interconnect market, according to reporting on the announcement. That target sits beside its estimate that the market itself could pass $1 billion over the medium term. Following the announcement, Tata Communications shares gained 1.73 percent to trade at Rs 1,683 on the National Stock Exchange.
The company reported 9.6 percent on year growth in revenue in the September quarter, to Rs 6,688 crore. Net profit rose 86 percent to Rs 341 crore, while free cash flows turned positive at Rs 212 crore. Those results arrived in the same week as the fibre announcement, giving the company room to fund the build from its own cash generation.
Business Standard reported, citing Chokshi, that the project could begin making a meaningful financial contribution around FY2028-29 as new fibre capacity becomes operational.