Bharti Airtel is aiming to significantly expand its presence in the data center market, with plans to build 1 gigawatt (GW) of capacity over the next few years, according to senior company leadership.
Speaking during the company’s Q4FY26 post-earnings conference call, Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman of Bharti Airtel, said the telecom operator is not satisfied with its current 10-12% market share in the data center segment.
“We really need to step up our game in data centers. Our ambition is to get to 1 gigawatt in a few years’ time,” Vittal said.
He added that Mumbai continues to account for nearly 50-60% of demand in the data center market, making land acquisition and infrastructure development critical for future growth.
Airtel also sees strong growth opportunities in cloud and sovereign computing solutions amid changing geopolitical dynamics. Vittal said the company has already secured 25 cloud-related deals and expects increasing demand for sovereign storage and computing infrastructure.
“We are fully sovereign. We are controlled by an Indian entity. So the control plane, the data plane, and the jurisdiction are in India,” he said.
The company plans to strengthen its edge infrastructure by building 56 world-class edge data centers over the next 24 months.
Bharti Airtel also revealed that its 5G network is now standalone (SA)-ready. Shashwat Sharma, MD & CEO, Bharti Airtel, said the company’s fixed wireless access (FWA) services are already operating on SA architecture, while mobile users are gradually transitioning.
Airtel further said it expanded over 8 million home passes in FY26, crossing 45 million home passes as it continues to scale its fibre broadband business.
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