NEW DELHI: Macquarie Capital-owned CloudExtel has announced that it plans to expand its 4G and fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks over the next five years to help carrier customers quickly expand their 4G and fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks, not just in uncovered areas. It said it could expand its fiber and wireless infrastructure by five times. , fiberize towers and data centers. However, Vodafone Idea (Vi)’s unstable financial situation is impacting the company’s business.
“We are going through a very rapid phase of transitioning from 4G to 5G, and we are also seeing rapid investment in data centers by content providers and hyperscalers to increase capacity in the country. needs the ability to make capital investments to provide solutions and provide solutions to serve customers,” Kunal Bajaj, CEO and founder of CloudExtel, said in an interview with ETTelecom.
Currently, the Mumbai-headquartered company has a network of 6,000 small cell sites across 475 cities and 7,000 kilometers of fiber in more than 50 cities across the country. “We can grow more than five times what we are now in the next five years,” he said.
Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) companies provide solutions and services to Bharti Airtel, Vi, Sify, RailTel, and others.
The CEO said Vi’s weak financial position has put a brake on small cell and fiber expansion projects with CloudExtel. “…it’s impacting all the regional partners we work with who provide ground services, execution and construction services. We all believe that with the right support and the right funding, Vi I am confident that we will be able to recover.”
In contrast, Bajaj said Airtel continues to invest in site densification for 4G and 5G, fiber deployment for tower backhaul, and increased penetration of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). said. “These factors contributed to our continued business growth with Airtel.”
While Reliance Jio and Airtel are nearing completion of pan-India 5th generation network rollouts, Vi is yet to roll out 5G commercially. “It’s very important for this country to have a strong three-carrier ecosystem because it’s important for consumer competition, innovation and investment in infrastructure,” he said. .
In May last year, Australia-headquartered Macquarie Capital acquired over 51% stake in CloudExtel for $100 million (Rs. 821 crore), helping CloudExtel expand its infrastructure and explore opportunities in the virtualized networking space. We made it possible to utilize.
In October 2023, Macquarie Capital announced that Advencap, an investor specializing in digital infrastructure ventures and fiber expertise, was also co-investing to acquire a stake in CloudExtel.
“…about half of our investment will go toward building small cell sites, and the other half will go toward building very deep, dense fiber networks. As for carriers, we will be focusing on the rollout of 4G. “On the 5G side, the macro layer is almost deployed in most major cities,” the executive said, adding that the next phase of investment will be in some parts of the region. Further upgrade your network capacity.
CloudExtel predicts that over the next five years, FTTH connections could grow from 35 million to 65 million, and tower fiberization could increase from 35-36% to 60%. “We need to fiberize 200,000 towers over the next five years. Once those towers are fiberized, the metro, core, or intracity networks to which they connect will need to expand as well. Yes,” Bajaj said.
He added that the company’s business has been profitable for the past three years, but declined to provide revenue figures. He said CloudExtel’s current workforce of 450 employees will increase by 50% to support its expansion plans.
