Bharti Airtel to increase broadband speed to 100 Mbps

Bharti Airtel has decided to upgrade its fixed broadband network to offer maximum speed of up to 100 Mbps, up from its current maximum speed of 16 Mbps. Airtel is utilising a V-fibre based on Vectorization technology which is being used in many European countries.

Bharti Airtel has already started providing high speed internet in Chennai and soon plans to roll out in the remaining 87 cities as well, claimed Ajay Puri, Director of Operations, Bharti Airtel. He further claimed that this deployment is pat of Bharti's "Operation Leap" to upgrade its mobile and fixed telephone networks to provide high-speed broadband.

Following this upgrade, the existing Airtel broadband users will be given an option to upgrade to this deployment technology which would require them to pay a little extra for the modern device. However, internet will be unlimited for the next three months for the same subscription plan they pay while opting for this.

Airtel justifies this measure as more and more people are using WiFi networks apart from mobile data. Mentioning the stats, from July 2014 - October 2015, the total cellular data usage grew 80% while the internet usage on WiFi grew to 164%, claims a report from Ericsson Mobility. Moreover, While mobile data such as 2G/3G/4G costs around on average Rs 0.23/MB, WiFi could cost Rs 0.02/MB, says a report from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

On the other hand, Reliance Jio and Vodafone are also focusing a lot on fixed broadband internet recently. For instance, Reliance Jio Infocomm is rolling out fibre-to-home wireline network in select cities through which it plans to offer speeds up to 1GB/sec. Just as Airtel, Reliance Jio has also started sending invitations to consumers living in flats and apartment complexes in Chennai.