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Highlights
- Bharti Airtel has targeted 1GW of data center capacity in the near future.
- The telco currently has a capacity of around 120-130MW.
- This has to go up in the next few years as per telco's targets.
Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
Bharti Airtel has targeted 1GW of data center capacity in the near future. The telco currently has a capacity of around 120-130MW. This has to go up in the next few years as per telco’s targets. Airtel operates its data center business under Nxtra. The telco expects the cloud business and enterprises to need more capacity in the coming years, and that is why it is increasing the data center capacity. Airtel has made it clear that it will aggressively put capex (capital expenditure) in areas where it thinks there is a need to step up competitive growth.
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Airtel is Investing More in Fiber in Top Cities of India
Bharti Airtel has said that it is expanding fiber network in the top 400 cities of India. When it comes to Nxtra, Airtel has already raised about a $1 billion funding from external investors. This money will help with expansion of capacity. The 1GW capacity is the main goal with Nxtra driven by hyperscaler demand and ongoing land acquisitions in Mumbai.
Further, Airtel is doubling down on the fiber network as it wants to prioritise fiber additions in the homes business. The telecom operator has seen that AirFiber customers, which are low-priced acquisitions have only led to a higher churn, poor experience, and expensive equipment retrieval. Fiber is better in general for keeping customers for a longer term and also has better experience overall for the users. Airtel has been actively pulling back FWA rollout in newer areas. Further, the rising memory and chip prices has impacted the unit economics of the FWA (fixed wireless access) business.
