After Airtel, BSNL gears up to fight upcoming Reliance Jio's high-speed broadbrand

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is mulling to revise its home broadband tariffs to counter the entry of Reliance Jio’s fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband service, according to a report in the Economic Times.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), BSNL leads the wired broadband market with almost 10 million subscribers. The state-run company currently offers FTTH based broadband connection for as low as Rs 799 under which the subscriber gets 10 GB of broadband data at 4 Megabits per second (Mbps).

There are unlimited plans too that offer unlimited high-speed broadband data based on fair usage policy (FUP). The unlimited data plans starts at Rs 2,641 that offers 175 GB high-speed data at 8 Mbps speed, which is throttled to 1 Mbps speed once the allocated quota is consumed.

Economic Times reported that the Reliance Jio Infocomm, which has been testing its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH)-based JioFiber broadband in select cities, is expected to commercially launch its services by October.

Recently, Business Standard reported that the Reliance JioFiber broadband services would launch with a preview offer – similar to how the company launched its Jio services -- with free access to JioFiber services for 90 days. Under the complimentary offer, the JioFibre broadband services will offer a blazing speed of 100 Mbps and a monthly free data of 100 GB, besides free access to Jio premium applications. The user will continue to get 1 Mbps of speed after 100 GB data cap.

Amid data war among top telecom and broadband players since the entry of Reliance Jio in the telecom space and its impending broadband play, India’s second major broadband player Bharti Airtel started offering 1,000 GB of free broadband data to its customers on select broadband plans -- only in the National Capital Region (NCR).

Airtel also refreshed its broadband plans and offered 100 per cent additional data to Airtel home broadband users under the new plans. Under the new plans, the company is offering 60 GB of high-speed broadband data at Rs 899, up from 30 GB offered earlier. Similarly, the updated Rs 1,099 plan dishes out 90 GB, compared with 50 GB earlier. The higher Rs 1,299 plan offers 125 GB, compared to 75 GB, while the premium Rs 1,499 plan offers 160 GB, against 100 GB earlier.