The Indian telecom industry has been on its toes ever since Reliance-backed Jio entered the market. Even the largest incumbent player Airtel got severely hit by Jio’s presence and till date nothing has changed. In fact, the competition will now stiffen further and will expand to the broadband segment really soon.
A few weeks ago, a report confirmed that Jio will soon start testing its FTTH service in some of the cities and will offer three months of complimentary services at 100 Mbps. The effect of this has already started to be seen as Airtel today announced to give its broadband subscribers up to double the data they are currently getting with no change in the tariff.
For instance, the basic plan in Delhi circle costing Rs. 899 will now offer 60GB of high-speed data instead of 30GB previously. Similarly, the Rs. 1,099 plan has been updated to 90GB data from 50GB, and the Rs. 1,499 plan will now give 160GB data compared to 100Gb earlier.
Airtel has been rolling out its V-Fiber technology across the country and is upgrading the internet speeds to 100 Mbps. Though the technology isn’t FTTH, V-Fiber uses your existing ADSL line to offer speeds that are much higher than what ADSL supports. The user, however, needs to install a new VDSL modem to get the higher speed.
On the other hand, Jio will be offering its wired internet services using FTTH and that too free of cost for three months. The user only needs to pay a refundable amount of Rs. 4,500 for the Wi-Fi router. Those with Jio FTTH connection will have a monthly FUP of 100GB after which the speed will reduce to 1 Mbps.
Airtel has confirmed that the increased data benefits will be available for all its customers in all the cities and the data will be credited to the existing customers automatically from their current billing cycles. The new customers can also avail these extra data benefits by applying for any of plans available in their city.
