New Delhi, Oct. 27 -- Tata Communications Ltd is hiking investment in connectivity infrastructure for India's data centre industry. The company said on Monday it will invest $400-450 million over the next three to five years to build a 10,000-km high-speed fibre network across the country, linking major data centre hubs. The announcement, made in an exchange filing, assumes significance as India's operational data centre capacity reached nearly 1.8 gigawatt (GW) in the first half of 2026, with another 3.86GW capacity under construction or in the pipeline by 2030, per real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. As more data centres come up across the country, Tata Communications is looking to tap demand for fast, reliable connectivity between these facilities. The company estimates that data centre-to-data centre connectivity could represent a market opportunity of more than $1 billion over the medium term. The company is looking to tap rising demand from cloud adoption, artificial intelligence (AI) deployment, data localisation requirements, and growing enterprise demand for high-capacity digital infrastructure. "From a business case perspective, it (monetisation) would be any industry benchmark 15 to 20% return on investment. As we bring capacity online, we will start to deliver revenues, so you start to kind of get that return," Rupesh Chokshi, chief product and technology officer and executive vice-president & global business head, network services, Tata Communications, told Mint. The first phase, expected to go live over three years, will connect the Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad-Chennai corridor, a key growth route for AI and hyperscalers. Subsequent phases will extend the network to emerging data centre hubs along India's eastern and western coasts, including Vizag, Bhubaneswar, Jamnagar and GIFT City....