Tata Communications Plans $450 Mn Investment to Build 10,000 Km AI Network

Tata Communications plans to invest $400 million to $450 million to build around 10,000 kilometres of fibre infrastructure connecting India’s data centres and AI hubs. 

The network will provide high-speed, low-latency connectivity between data centres and link them to the company’s global network backbone.

The three-phase project will target hyperscalers, AI platforms, neocloud providers and enterprises as demand for data centre capacity and AI infrastructure grows in India.

The first phase will cover the Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad-Chennai corridor. Subsequent phases will extend the network to data centre hubs in eastern and western India, including Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Jamnagar and GIFT City.

Tata Communications expects the data centre-to-data centre connectivity market in India to exceed $1 billion over the medium term.

“We are excited about the opportunity in the India data centre-to-data centre connectivity, which we believe could evolve into a market exceeding USD 1 billion over the medium term,” said Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, MD and CEO of Tata Communications.

He added that anchor customer commitments and contracted demand are driving a growing share of the company’s expansion, providing a basis for capital deployment.

The network will connect data centre clusters with international cable landing stations, linking Indian AI infrastructure to global markets. The company plans to expand its national long-distance and metro networks alongside the project to meet existing enterprise and data centre connectivity requirements.

“The AI economy needs more than compute. It needs a network built for speed, scale and resilience,” said Rupesh Chokshi, Chief Product and Technology Officer and Executive Vice President and Global Business Head of network services at Tata Communications.

The network, which the company calls its AI Network Fabric, will provide connectivity for AI workloads that require high bandwidth, low latency and network resilience.

India’s data centre industry is expanding amid growing cloud adoption, AI deployment and demand for local data storage. As operators add capacity, connectivity between facilities is becoming an important part of the infrastructure required to run AI workloads.

Tata Communications operates more than 500,000 kilometres of subsea optical fibre and over 200,000 kilometres of terrestrial fibre, according to the company.

In June, it announced plans for a new subsea cable system between Mumbai and Singapore. It has also invested as a consortium member in a cable system connecting Chennai and Singapore, which is expected to be ready for service in the fourth quarter of 2029.

The company integrated its TGN IA2 submarine cable in 2025 to improve latency, reliability and network diversity across the Asia-Pacific region.

The planned AI network will build on this infrastructure to connect India’s data centre clusters with international AI and cloud hubs.