The State government will soon come out with a Tamil Nadu Data Centre Policy.
Guidance Tamil Nadu, a government agency tasked with investment promotion, and the Departments of Industries and Information and Technology are working on the policy that will strengthen the ecosystem for data centre companies.
At Investment Conclave 2021, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin signed memoranda of understanding with the Singapore-based CapitaLand and Web Werks involving ₹1,900 crore in investments. The two data centres will be set up at Ambattur. In the last two years, the State has signed memoranda of understanding with 9 companies for opening data centres on a proposed total investment of ₹16,927 crore and with the potential of creating more than 9,000 jobs.
Guidance Tamil Nadu is in discussions with data centre companies across the world and other technology companies to launch operations in Tamil Nadu. Companies, including Yotta, Princeton Digital, ST Telemedia, Netmagic and Adani, are in the process of setting up their data centres in Chennai.
Ambattur is the preferred choice for data centre companies because of its geographical conditions and data centre ecosystem. Siruseri is the next ideal destination because of the presence of several information technology companies.
The existing information technology ecosystem, submarine cable landing stations, optical fibre cable network and surplus power have helped Chennai emerge as a data centre hub. Tamil Nadu has 6 submarine communications cables with a bandwidth of 14.8 terabytes per second (TBps), the highest in the country. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Chennai is among the top five service areas in India for broadband subscriptions.
