Two-thirds of India’s service providers now expect artificial intelligence to pay the bills for the rest of the decade. A new Ciena survey found that 67% of Indian respondents strongly agree AI-driven network services will be a primary driver of new revenue over the next three to five years, with another 27% somewhat agreeing. That makes India one of the most bullish of the 12 markets covered.The study was conducted by Censuswide between July 13 and July 23, 2026, across 1,200 telecom providers, wholesale fibre network operators and regional service providers, with 100 respondents from India. Three priorities came through clearly: modernising network infrastructure, delivering more dependable enterprise performance, and building business models around edge computing, cloud connectivity and physical AI.
Data centre interconnect is where the money is expected to show up first
Managed optical fibre network services, or MOFN, are central to that plan. Nearly all Indian respondents, 98%, expect MOFN to contribute revenue from interconnecting distributed AI compute clusters over the next three years, and 48% see it becoming a significant contributor. As AI training and inference workloads get spread across multiple sites, the fibre linking them stops being plumbing and starts being a product.
The urgency is around optical capacity, not ambition
That optimism comes with a caveat. About 88% of Indian providers say optical network upgrades are urgently needed to deliver the low-latency performance enterprises will demand from premium AI services, and 38% want major upgrades immediately. Some 93% call next-generation optical technology, including higher-capacity wavelengths and power-efficient coherent optics, critical to making AI connectivity profitable. Another 94% rate advanced network automation as important or critical.Edge services are already being priced in. Around 88% expect GPU-as-a-Service, edge compute, localised AI inference and private wireless to bring in at least 10% of total enterprise revenue within three years, while 35% expect more than 20%. Physical AI, covering industrial robots, machine vision and remote-control systems, drew a strong response too, with 59% expecting it to account for over 15% of AI enterprise revenue within five years.“After going through one of the fastest 5G roll outs globally, Indian service providers are now shifting focus to AI infrastructure builds and AI monetization,” said Gautam Billa, Vice President, Solutions Engineering and CTO for Asia Pacific, India and Japan at Ciena.The 5G build gave operators reach. The AI build will test whether that reach can be sold at a premium.