Airtel brings 30Mbps and 50Mbps broadband to India with 200GB caps
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The state of broadband Internet in India is getting better by the day. Only last week, BSNL announced it is coming out with 2Mbps plans with unlimited downloads, while MTNL recently cut prices or upgraded speeds across the board. Airtel also has introduced new 'Impatience Plans' recently, with speeds of up to 4Mbps.
Now, the company is really stepping up the game. Using VDSL2 technology, Airtel has launched the country's first 30Mbps and 50Mbps broadband plans! What’s most surprising is that they aren’t exorbitantly priced either. They are expensive, yes, but understandably so. The 50 Mbps plan will cost users Rs. 8,999 per month and allow for up to 200GB of free data transfer. The cost per MB beyond that isn't known yet. The 30Mbps plan will cost Rs. 7,999 per month and also allow for 200GB of free data transfer. Both the plans will come with valu-added services such as parallel ringing, Website Builder (Basic), PC Secure (Anti-Virus software), online storage, and unlimited gaming on Games on Demand. VDSL2 (Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line) is the newest and most advanced standard of DSL broadband wire line communications. It is designed to support the wide deployment of Triple Play services such as voice, video, data, IPTV, high definition television (HDTV) and interactive gaming. VDSL2 also enables customers to stream HD Content anywhere from the internet world as well. The company plans to launch these new plans in Delhi and Gurgaon first, and will slowly roll them out in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore.
TECHNOHOLIK SAYS: If you ask us, this is an absolutely fantastic move. Yes, the plans are really expensive, but for a power user who is not interested in piracy, they do work out fantastically. Let’s work some quick maths, shall we?
A speed of 30 Megabits (Mb) per second still gets you 3.75 MegaBytes (MB) per second. That’s almost thrice the bit-rate needed to stream any decent-quality movie. This is also enough for streaming 720p high-definition movies, but you may have to buffer a bit to stream 1080p FullHD videos from U.S. and U.K. sites.
Now, suppose you were to watch two movies a day (which is still pretty high). Add to that about two TV shows a day, of one-hour episodes. That's two movies (take a maximum of 1.4GB per movie) and two TV shows (350MB per show). That's 3.5GB of data transfer a day. Over 30 days— and that's seriously a lot of movies and shows you're watching, and should consider making a profession out of it— you would consume 105GB of data. Add regular surfing, YouTube videos, a few huge downloads and the like, and you would still struggle to hit the 200GB limit.
The same logic holds true for music, with services like Grooveshark and Last.FM becoming free music sources at this rate. The point being that the speed and the transfer limit are more than enough for any average consumer. If anyone complains about the cap on downloads, he is more likely to use it for piracy.
And with all of this, you save huge on buying more hard drives and DVDs to store all your data, since you are essentially operating in the cloud. In fact, if you use a notebook, it becomes a lot handier and cheaper.
We can understand how a pirate might scream bloody murder at the high price tag because the average Indian on an unlimited broadband connection still hasn’t gotten out of the acorn-collecting squirrel’s mindset of "I must download something all the time otherwise I am wasting my money." But with an actual shot at cloud computing, it’s time to grow out of that mentality.