NTT of Japan will build renewable energy facilities in India and lay a submarine connection in Chennai

The main global provider of data centres, NTT group, is planning to develop centres in tier 2 cities in addition to expanding in key Indian cities and purchasing power from other sources. He added that Chennai had received the undersea cable system MIST, which has a capacity of around 200 TBPS of data.

The NTT company currently has 16 data centres in four cities: Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Noida, which is close to Delhi. In the aforementioned four cities as well as Kolkata, the firm is constructing 11 more data centre. "Tier two cities like Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Bhopal, and others are becoming more accessible to us. According to Sharad Sanghi, Chairman of NTT Global Data Centres, "we have located land parcels."

Sanghi, a conventional data centre would cost between $100 and $150 million to build, while NTT will be spending close to $300 million to build two data centres in Chennai. He claimed that NTT had already declared a $2 billion commitment, of which the expenditure for the Chennai centre was a part. About $500 million is being invested annually by the group. He claims that NTT's business in India currently places it third internationally and will soon move up the list due to its significant potential.

The $108 billion Japanese company has operations in 20 countries around the world, has a 1,900 MW IT load, and has over 1,000 MW of future expansion planned. According to Sanghi, the group controls 22% of the Indian market for data centres. The data centres are using their capacity between 70 and 80 percent of the time. When asked about the group's ambitions for renewable energy, he stated that solar and solar-wind hybrid plants are the main focus. The company will also purchase electricity from renewable sources.

Shekhar Sharma, CEO & Managing Director, the IT load of the current data centres is approximately 204 MW, but due to additions, it will increase to 349.2 MW by March 2024. According to him, the increased IT load will be 526.4 MW, bringing the total for NTT in India to 821.8 MW when existing and future planned usage are taken into account.

The MIST (Malaysia, India, Singapore and Thailand) subsea cable, the NTT group's first cable system, will offer direct access to and from India, according to the officials. The 8,100 km subsea cable will link the aforementioned four nations. Additionally, the NTT Communications 12-fiber pair cable, with a capacity of 200 TBPS, is landing for the first time.