Indian telco Bharti Airtel is reportedly planning a large-scale investment and expansion of its data center portfolio.
India’s Economic Times reports that the telco will invest Rs 3,500 crore ($470m) over three years to expand its data center capacity by up to five times.
The company currently has around 100MW of capacity, and could build up to eight data centers through its Nxtra Data subsidiary. Each data center or park could host up to 100MW.
Airtel reportedly declined to comment on the story.
Data center investment in India is increasing rapidly. In July alone, Microsoft is reportedly looking to invest $2 billion building a data center campus in Hyderabad, while Web Werks is investing almost $200 million in data centers in Chennai and Bengaluru.
Singapore-based real estate firm CapitaLand is also investing $160 million in a facility in Chennai, while CapitaLand-owned Ascendas India Trust is developing a 90MW data center campus in Navi Mumbai, India.
Google opened a Delhi cloud region this month, while Digital Realty and Brookfield announced a new joint venture to develop data centers in the country.
In April Airtel announced a large restructuring to separate out different parts of the business into their own units, with the company saying it planned to split its telecoms and digital services businesses into distinct units and keep infrastructure units such as Nxtra as separate entities.
