Lightstorm’s SmartNet and Polarin – NaaS case study
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Welcome to this series analysing innovative B2B offerings by leading telcos worldwide. In this second edition, we turn our focus to a successful NaaS player in India.
Description
Format: PDF file
Pages: 9
Author: Ayaan Patel & Amy Cameron
Publication date: December 2025
Introduction to Lightstorm
Lightstorm entered the network infrastructure market in India in 2020, with a focus on providing low latency and high bandwidth solutions with 99.99% SLA uptime as compared to 99.90% industry average.
Lightstorm’s SmartNet service provides carrier-neutral, low latency and data centre interconnect (DCI)-focused fibre connectivity. Since entering the Indian market in 2020, by December 2025, SmartNet had expanded to seven major cities across India with ~25,000km of route fibre connected to ~60 data centres.
In 2023, Lightstorm launched Polarin, a NaaS platform which enables instant cloud connectivity and automates network interconnections.
Polarin DCI Wave offers the world’s first Layer 0/Layer 1 automation with <10 minutes service provisioning, delivering an industry-leading degree of control and provisioning optimisation capabilities to customers.
In March 2023, Lightstorm expanded into Indonesia and the Middle East, and has entered Europe and North America in May 2025, with 1,500+Tbps capacity deployed globally.
In the spotlight: SmartNet and Polarin NaaS
We deep-dive into Lightstorm’s two main services – SmartNet and Polarin. In August 2020, Lightstorm launched SmartNet, India’s first carrier-neutral, low-latency, DCI-focused fibre network, serving hyperscalers, telcos, and large enterprises. In June 2023 it followed with the launch of Polarin, the self-serve network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform enabling enterprises to manage hybrid and multi-cloud connections.
Through SmartNet and Polarin, Lightstorm fulfils all four principles of the platform mindset: customer-centric, flexible and scalable, multipurpose and bringing beneficial network effects.
Our insight covers the following key points:
Technologies and industry terms referenced include: Technologies and industry terms referenced include: automation, AWS, Ciena, Cloud, cloud platform, ConnectiviTree, connectivity, Console Connect, content, data centre, India, interconnect, Layer 0, Layer 1, Lightstorm, Microsoft Azure, Nokia, robotic automation, SaaS, services
