Adani Says Will Use 5G Spectrum To Support Data Centres, Businesses

Richest Indian Gautam Adani's group on Tuesday said the Rs 212 crore worth of spectrum it has bought in a millimetre wave band will be used to create a private network to support its businesses and data centres.

Adani Data Networks Ltd (ADNL), a unit of Adani Enterprises Ltd, acquired the right to use 400MHz of spectrum in the 26GHz millimetre wave band for 20 years in the auction that concluded on Monday.

Adani Group plans to use the airwaves for its data centres as well as the super app it is building to support businesses from electricity distribution to airports, and gas retailing to ports.

"The newly acquired 5G spectrum is expected to help create a unified digital platform that will accelerate the pace and scale of the Adani group's digitisation of its core infrastructure, primary industry and B2C business portfolio," the group said in a statement.

Adani group bought less than one per cent of all spectrum sold in the auction and its purchase price was a fraction of Rs 1.5 lakh crore bids that the government received.

The group's broader strategy to digitally integrate its current and future businesses include linking its data centres through a network of submarine and terrestrial cables, building the largest industrial operations cloud in the world, developing the super app to offer a suite of services across its consumer base of 400 million, and establishing a world-class AI centre of excellence.

"Acquiring 400MHz of spectrum is the group's first step in integrating its digital infrastructure portfolio, which includes data centres, terrestrial fibre and submarine cables, industrial cloud, AI innovation labs, cybersecurity and SuperApps," it said.

Rival billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio was the top bidder at the spectrum auction, walking away with almost half of the airwaves sold. Telecom tycoon Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Ltd were other major bidders.

Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, said his ports-to-energy conglomerate's foray into the industrial 5G space will allow portfolio companies to offer a set of new add-on services that capitalize on all the other digital segments that are being built.

"Given that our portfolio is a highly distributed asset intensive investment that are all being revolutionized by sensorisation and fast becoming IoT enabled, we believe the next data surge will be created more by machines than by people as all devices get interconnected. This data will need to be streamed, stored, processed, and analysed by other machines in real-time and this capability will change every single industry," he said.

This volume will be exponentially higher and generated at the edges, especially in a country like India, where the Tier 2 and 3 cities are witnessing the fastest all-round growth, he said.

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