# Tata Communications to build ₹4,350 crore AI super highway 2026-10-26T09:18:42+00:00 | Business & Economy | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 3 independent outlets Tata Communications on Monday (26 October 2026) announced a ₹4,350 crore ($400 to 450 million) investment to build approximately 10,000 km of AI-ready fibre network across India, which it is calling the 'AI Super Highway'. The network will add about 6 petabits per second of capacity to its existing 1.25 Pbps infrastructure and will be funded from operating cash flows. The first phase will link the Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad-Chennai corridor, expected to go live within three years. Subsequent phases will extend to Vizag, Bhubaneswar, Jamnagar and GIFT City, connecting data centre clusters with international cable landing stations. The company estimates India's data centre-to-data centre connectivity market could exceed $1 billion over the medium term. MD and CEO Ganesh Lakshminarayanan said a growing part of the expansion is backed by anchor customer commitments. ## Indian Opinion Analysis All three outlets reported Tata Communications' ₹4,350 crore ($450 million) AI super highway investment in straight news style, drawing on the same company announcement and executive quotes. The Economic Times led with the rupee figure and the three-phase timeline extending to FY36, while CNBC-TV18 and Mint led with the dollar amount and a 3 to 5 year horizon. Mint added the sharpest context, citing Cushman & Wakefield data on India's 1.8 GW operational data centre capacity and CBRE's $173 billion cumulative investment figure, and named competitor Lightstorm's parallel $500 million AI corridor project. The other two outlets omitted this competitive and industry-backdrop detail. All three attributed the $1 billion addressable market estimate and anchor-customer backing to MD Ganesh Lakshminarayanan identically. The coverage was uniform straight reporting throughout. ## Coverage Coverage: 3 sources, 3 neutral - economictimes.indiatimes.com (neutral report) Led with rupee figure and FY30-FY36 phases - cnbctv18.com (neutral report) Led with dollar amount, added share price drop - livemint.com (neutral report) Added Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE data, named competitor This brief was synthesised by AI from the 3 sources linked above, so one read covers every framing they carry. Tags: AI Super Highway, Chennai, data centre, Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, Mumbai, Tata Communications Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/tata-communications-to-build-rs4-350-crore-ai-super-highway/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/tata-communications-to-build-rs4-350-crore-ai-super-highway/#story-in-brief How this brief was made: an AI model read the reports linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. Stance labels are editorial classifications of how each outlet framed this story, assigned by the same model, not ratings of the outlets. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/