In a siege against the latest broadband segment entrant, Reliance Jio GigaFiber, other companies are trying to strengthen their hold on the existing subscriber base. In the recent times, we have seen that existing broadband players in the market like BSNL, Airtel and many more have been launching extra benefits, revised plan and increased speeds to please their customers and to stop them from migrating to Jio GigaFiber. Bharti Airtel is riding on the same bandwagon. In a move to retain its broadband user base, the Sunil Bharti Mittal led telco has revoked FUP on many of its plans in some of the major cities.
The first city to reap the benefit of this change is Hyderabad, following which Airtel has extended this revision to 20 other crucial markets. Apparently, this new revision of removing the FUP altogether and giving unlimited data to the consumers will help the telco in countering the new gigabit broadband service provider – Reliance Jio GigaFiber.
Bharti Airtel V-Fiber Revised Plans
In Mumbai, monthly plans of Rs 699 and Rs 1,999 have undergone this revision, and they now come with unlimited data or merely no FUP. Similarly, In Jamnagar, Surat, Infocity Gandhinagar, and Ahmedabad Rs 499, Rs 599, and Rs 1,099 plans have been made genuinely unlimited and ripped off of the FUP limit. The Rs 1,999 plan in Kolkata, Indore, Jaipur, Chandigarh, and Delhi NCR has been changed as well, and lastly, the Rs 499 and Rs 1,999 plan in Karnal, Ambala, and Agra now comes with absolutely no FUP at all.
Transition to Fibre
Airtel has been drastically adopting technology to catch up with the latest times. To compete better with other telcos, Airtel has long been planning a transition to Airtel V-Fiber which offers 300 Mbps of speed on Wi-Fi. Additionally, Airtel is equipped to upgrade to 1 Gbps speed in case the consumers demand it. Also, Airtel is offering 15-20% discount on half yearly and an annual subscription of its broadband plans.
Experts’ Opinion on Strategy
Rohan Dhamija, Analyst at Mason partner and Head for the Middle East, South Asia, is of the opinion that Airtel is likely to benefit from this move. However, he is also of the thought that Airtel is going to limit itself since its deployment in 89 cities is not based on fibre and the DSL technology which the company is implementing is going to lack efficiency, according to ET.
Naveen Kulkarni, Philip Capital telecom analyst, says that shedding the FUP limit on its broadband plan is going to be a solid measure against Reliance Jio GigaFiber. He said that in contrast to the mobile data market, the tapered volume augmentation costs of wired broadband services are miniscule.
