en.Wedoany.com Reported - The Adani Group has significantly adjusted its strategic direction in the telecom and enterprise network sectors within its nearly $100 billion five-year capital expenditure plan. The group attempted to become a private network operator for its own ports, airports, and factories in 2022, but exited the telecom infrastructure business between 2025 and 2026, while committing larger-scale investments to build data centers and cloud capabilities to support other enterprises' networks and India's artificial intelligence development needs.
In 2022, Adani Data Networks Limited (ADNL) spent approximately 2.12 billion rupees to acquire 400 MHz of spectrum in the 26 GHz millimeter wave band across six telecom service areas—Gujarat, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu—and obtained a unified telecom service license. The plan aimed to build private 5G networks with enhanced cybersecurity for its ports, airports, power, and logistics operations, and to support a super app covering all its businesses. However, by early 2025, the Department of Telecommunications pressured ADNL over its failure to meet minimum deployment obligations and accumulated penalties. Adani informed regulators that deploying its own private network had proven commercially unviable. In April 2025, ADNL signed a final agreement to transfer all its 26 GHz spectrum holdings to Bharti Airtel and Bharti Hexacom, thereby exiting the telecom infrastructure business it had entered three years earlier.
Exiting private 5G does not mean a complete departure from the network domain. That same month, Adani announced a $10 billion incremental investment in data centers to address growing demand for AI and business process outsourcing. In February 2026, the group committed to investing $100 billion by 2035 to build AI-ready data centers powered by renewable energy across India, describing it as an investment in "sovereign AI infrastructure." The plan has key partner support: a gigawatt-scale campus in Visakhapatnam in collaboration with Google, and another campus in Noida; facilities in Hyderabad and Pune with Microsoft; and an expanded partnership with Flipkart to build a second AI-focused data center through AdaniConneX. These projects are underpinned by Adani Green Energy's 30 GW Khavda renewable energy complex (with over 10 GW already operational) and an additional $55 billion renewable energy expansion, including one of the world's largest battery energy storage systems, designed to provide round-the-clock power for AI-scale computing.
The meaning of "enterprise network" for the Adani Group has thus changed. Instead of owning spectrum and operating private wireless networks for its divisions, the group now plans to purchase connectivity as a service from licensed telecom operators, while building and owning the computing and hosting layers, data centers, cloud capacity, and power supply—precisely the infrastructure needed by telecom operators, hyperscalers, and enterprises. Adani has shifted from trying to compete with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio for spectrum to becoming the "landlord" and power supplier for these companies, as well as for Google, Microsoft, and the AI economy built by local enterprises.
The spectrum transfer eliminates a potential private network competitor in six service areas and provides Bharti Airtel with additional millimeter wave capacity. For hyperscalers, server and network equipment manufacturers, and cooling and power infrastructure suppliers, Adani's pivot makes it a major customer and site developer rather than a competitor, with its own renewable energy generation seen as a differentiating advantage to attract anchor tenants. The group stated that its $100 billion data center commitment could further catalyze $150 billion in investments in server manufacturing, sovereign cloud platforms, and related industries by 2035, potentially creating a $250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India over the next decade.
The ambition in 2022 was to become a telecom operator, while the reality in 2026 is to become the power and computing backbone for other companies' networks and AI workloads. Whether the campuses for Google, Microsoft, and Flipkart materialize as planned, the transfer of the relinquished 26 GHz spectrum proceeds smoothly, and Adani Green Energy's renewable capacity expands in tandem with data center construction will determine how quickly this new network identity—based on data centers and power rather than base stations and spectrum—can be established.
