AI puts a stop to data centres in non-metros

These smaller data centres, less than 10MW, serve local data demand

- Shouvik Das & Nehal Chaliawala

Edge data centres, which were expected three years ago to boost India's cloud services market with proliferation in smaller cities, have remained a pipe dream as applications requiring high connection speeds have failed to take off as predicted.

These smaller data centres, designated to be less than 10 megawatt (MW) in capacity as against a hyperscaler facility's 50MW-plus size, serve local data demand within districts. They provide high connectivity speeds, or low latency in technical parlance, by reducing the physical distance to the end user. They were planned to come up in Tier II cities such as Guwahati, Patna, Lucknow, Jaipur, Nagpur, Pune and others to serve applications like smart cars, augmented reality headsets, automated traffic management and more.