Global communications technology bellwether NTT Communications has announced a slew of expansion plans in India as it celebrates its decade-long presence in the country.

The company plans to open a new data center in collaboration with Netmagic Solutions Pvt. Ltd. , a prominent managed services provider in which it holds a 74% stake. With 300,000 square feet of space and 3,000 racks, this would be one of the largest data centers in the country.

"This is the first data center that we own ourselves instead of having a long-term lease as is the industry norm," says Sharad Sanghi, Netmagic's managing director. "We would be investing $100 million in this data center."

The datacenter will be operational in the third quarter of 2015, according to Sanghi.

With its national long-distance (NLD) license, NTT Communications Corp. (NYSE: NTT) will be able to offer a host of ICT solutions to customers through the data center. At the moment, NTT provides various system integration services, while Netmagic offers data center and cloud services in India.

"With this [NLD] we would be able to provide a range of network services that are expanding in India," says Takashi Nogami, vice president of global product development for Netmagic. "Couple this with Netmagic's data center services and cloud computing capabilities and we would emerge as one-stop ICT solutions company in the Indian market."

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Netmagic already has eight data centers in the country: four in Mumbai, two in Bengaluru and one each in Chennai and Noida.

NTT Communications has also announced that its Ahmedabad branch in Gujarat will start operating today. The company already has a presence in Gurgaon (National Capital Region), Neemrana (Rajasthan), Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru.

The Japanese player has five subsidiaries in India, including NTT Communications India, Netmagic, Arkadin India, Emerio India and Virtela Technology Services Inc. .

Other NTT Group companies like Dimension Data and NTT Data Corp. also operate in India, with the former providing IT services for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) , a government-owned telecom operator.

Mobile operator NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NYSE: DCM) used to have a stake in Tata DoCoMo, a telecom venture of Tata Group, but last year exercised an option to exit the venture at 50% of its acquisition cost.

However, the application it had to file with the Reserve Bank of India on this matter was rejected, and the case has now been referred to the London Court of International Arbitration.

— Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, special to Light Reading