Power Grid Corporation of India Limited is in the process of carving out its telecom vertical to a new fully-owned subsidiary, Powergrid Teleservices Limited, after receiving all regulatory approvals. The move is in a bid to have a focused approach and to move up the value chain by entering into the data centre business.
Meanwhile, the company has also received approval from the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to operate data centres.
Power Grid Corporation of India Limited has one of the largest optic fibre networks of 76,000 kilometres. Moreover, as per the company, the pilot projects to demonstrate mobile base transceiver station (BTS) and FM Radio transmission on high voltage power transmission towers have shown promising results.
In addition, the company also noted that the CERC has accorded approval to Powergrid to establish and operate data centres under PowerTel using surplus lands of the sub-stations. The first data centre as a pilot is expected to come up near Delhi with a capacity of 250 racks and it will be ramped up to 1000 racks. Meanwhile, the detailed business models on data centres are being worked out.
