Adani's Plan for Private 5G Focuses on Certain States Only

Just before the start of 5G auction of India, Gautam Adani owned Adani Group had cleared the fact that they will not enter into commercial mobile space and they did the exact in the Spectrum Auction 2022. Adani Data Networks Ltd (ADNL), an arm of Adani Enterprises picked up spectrum in the mmWave band i.e. 26 GHz band only, and that too only in key 6 circles - Andra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Mumbai, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu where industrialization is in massive scale and the scope of private 5G would be huge. They even did not spend money to win spectrum in Delhi-NCR circle. That's definitely not an aggressive bidding from Adani Data Networks. 

Back in the beginning of 2022, there was rumors that Adani Group may take over Vodafone-Idea's telecom assets, but soon it was clear that Adani is not interested in consumer telecom services. 

Now it is clear they want to tap the telecom market where data is being generated mostly by machines - IoT (Internet of Things). ADNL will build a unified digital platform to accelerate the company's digitization ambition to keep its core infrastructure, primary industry and B2C business portfolio as well as data centres, terrestrial fibre and submarine Cables, industrial cloud, AI innovation labs, cybersecurity and super apps - all in one place. Their IoT plans are very ambitious - to connect people and machines via their data centers over a super app in their business presence from electricity distribution to airports, and gas retailing to ports.

But when digital India hits the country, including online marketplace, cab hailing service, food delivery etc, tier II and tier III witnessed the fastest all-round growth. Jio did the market disruption with price war, and with internet in the smartphone Indian consumers became the winner. Keeping most of the country out of their radar, Adani's move in the digital space is bit skeptical. But one thing is sure they will invest in 5G space with guaranteed revenue.  

Circle	Amount of Spectrum On 26GHz band (unpaired)	Winning Price (in Rs Cr)
Andra Pradesh	50 MHz	28.5
Gujarat	100 MHz	50.0
Karnataka	50 MHz	20.0
Mumbai	100 MHz	78.0
Rajasthan	50 MHz	12.5
Tamil Nadu	50 MHz	23.0
TOTAL	400 MHz	212 Cr Rs