American Cisco to bolster Ambani's Jio hyperscale ambition, enable large data centres

Time of India

29-07-2025

The US digital communications technology conglomerate Cisco Systems, working with India's Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, is well equipped to handle space broadband traffic, following device validation with Elon Musk-owned Starlink, and can now offer end-to-end visibility into the satellite network. In an interaction with ETTelecom's Muntazir Abbas, Guru Shenoy, senior vice president of provider connectivity, Cisco, talks on India's telecom landscape, agile network, agentic AI, public sector business, data centre partnership with Jio, and a recent Starlink validation. Edited excerpts:
How are you looking at the opportunities, especially in the telecom space in India?
The primary business that service providers have is connectivity. For example, Jio and Airtel in India, want to go big in broadband. So, it needs to be secure and resilient. The other angle is the new devices that we are building with our Cisco 8000 portfolio. These are designed to converge all different kinds of access onto the same box. Now there is a satellite coming into the picture. You need different kinds of equipment often to terminate satellites and bring that onto the router. And then you have cellular radios that are also connected to routers. Oftentimes, these used to be separate devices. What we have done with our newest generation of devices. It can also connect to satellite ground stations all in a single device.
Coming to your agile network, you have a bunch of deployments. So, can you just name a few of them?
So, the public references we have are Aurelien in Europe, and Colt. We also have Swisscom in Europe. We have Reliance Jio in India. That's another big public reference for us. Cisco 8000 and this agile services networking that I am talking about, the routers, have been adopted. It's the fastest adoption we have seen in the history of Cisco Service Provider Networking. So, the adoption curve has been huge.
Cisco has been talking about agentic AI. Are you in discussions with service providers for this?
This is very new technology, we have announced. So, the Cisco service provider version of it is called Crosswork, and again, it's part of the agile services networking infrastructure. We have three pieces there. We have routers; we have pluggable connectivity with optical and then we have the automation tool. So, Cisco Crosswork is our brand for the tool that manages service provider networks. Crosswork exists in most major service providers today already. We are bringing AI capabilities into those, and there are two that we have just released. It's a new release, and we are in the labs of most of these customers. By the end of the year, we should have some public references.
In India and even globally, there is a lot of conversation happening on space broadband services. Both terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks (NTN) are complementary to each other. How is Cisco as a multinational, gearing up to enable products in the longer run?
So, what Starlink does is they bring their satellite connectivity. And they can offer it to end customers. But when they connect the end customers, it goes into space and then comes back to their ground station. They need to connect their ground station to somebody for that traffic to be carried somewhere else, and that somebody is always a service provider. Service providers are connecting their equipment, handing off the traffic to Starlink on one side or taking the traffic from Starlink and then carrying it wherever it needs to be carried, that's the model. The problem has been that these are two completely different networks, so you need a lot of work to integrate that. What we have done is we have done the work of integrating with all these backend satellite providers who want to use satellite connectivity as an option. If they are using Cisco equipment, they can basically pull a document and say, this is how you do the connection and it will all work, because we have already validated the whole thing.
Do you act as a bridge between these two?
We act as a bridge and we do more, we also give you visibility with our tools, because we have integrated our telemetry with Starlink and vice versa into our tools. So now you can get full end-to-end visibility of what's happening in the network. It looks like just another end-point access connectivity.
But what about the device ecosystem? Are the current devices capable enough to handle?
Yes, that's part of the validation that we're doing. If there are features we need to do, like sometimes timing and sync, there are some of these features associated with the routers that need to be tweaked, adjusted to handle satellite traffic. We've done all of that work. So, all our routers now can support satellite connectivity.
So, what are the use cases that you foresee?
There is enough density of homes, and satellites are still not as good for highly dense urban areas. You go to Delhi or Mumbai; it's going to be hard to offer satellites in an effective manner. However, if you go to slightly semi-urban areas or rural areas, it becomes expensive to make fiber or microwave or any of these technologies. So, this is where satellites can be very effective including in mountainous regions because every other technology is challenged. First, you can't put towers everywhere, it's too expensive. Secondly, even if you run things like millimeter wave or some of these other technologies, they are subject to a lot of weather interference and the quality drops. Satellite is much more robust that way, so it's become a very viable technology, and that's why we're seeing adoption. The only challenge is often regulations. So, if the regulatory hurdles are cleared, the adoption will happen.
But what about cost efficiency? Because this is something which is viewed as a little expensive. Developing markets like India may not be able to see aggressive adoption.
So that remains a challenge in some scenarios, but there are certain use cases. Like if it's rural, the cost advantage shifts to satellite, because it is much cheaper to offer satellite instead of going and putting towers everywhere or laying fiber.
What are the enterprise areas for use cases?
Defence, mining and all of these, like wherever you need connectivity in fairly remote areas including transportation such as cruise lines and aircraft, all of those offer satellite. There's no other good option there. So those are major industries. But now we are seeing even regular enterprises like shops and grocery stores. They will give you a satellite-based link as a backup. Because oftentimes the satellite model is also a little different. It comes with battery backup. So, if you lose power, for example, you have satellite-based connectivity that keeps going for a few hours.
Are you open to working or doing some sort of pilot programs with non-terrestrial network (NTN) providers?
Absolutely. It's very complimentary for us because we don't build satellite technology, they don't build terrestrial networks. For us to work together with them is very complimentary.
Are there any new discussions going on with service providers?
Specific to the India market, we are working with all of them, offering broadband solutions. First, Jio especially has very ambitious plans about growing their broadband subscriber footprint. We are working on the solutions with them for that.
Is it a part of any fresh deal, or the work is in progress?
The work is in progress already. They are setting up AI infrastructure, Jio Brain and they basically want to be the hyper scaler in India where they want to create large data centers, where they will host AI training, inferencing and cloud-based AI applications. We'll provide data centers, and the connectivity for them.
Any other government projects that you are working on with any of the states in India?
Tanfinet (Tamil Nadu), Mahanet (Maharashtra), and then there are a few other local initiatives, so we are all part of that, and we continue to be. They are a part of
BharatNet
. So, we continue to be part of that. There are defence deals that we are involved in also. We have a sizable public sector, and defence engagement.
What is the revenue breakup between the public and private sectors?
Private sector revenue is higher in India. We have been successful with Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea, all three networks. I would say the majority is in the private sector.