Top Broadband Players
BSNL Bharti MTNL RCom Tata Comm You Telecom Sify Others
Key Players
3,327 1,123 682 510 320 119 109 781
Others include: Hathway, Tikona, Beam Telecom, Quadrant, Spectranet, Asianet and Ortel
As on December 2011, BSNL has 12.3 mn internet subscribers. Reliance has over 3.5 mn, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) has 2.5 mn, and Bharti airtel has 1.3 mn. You Broadband and Cable India has 389,983 internet subscribers. Hathway cable and Datacom has 360,571 subscribers, Tikona Digital Networks and Tata Communications have over 255,411 and 188,118 users, respectively. Beam Telecom and Asianet Satellite has 180,926 and 112,954 users, respectively. As on December 2011, the total internet leased line customers stood at 50,343 and the total cyber cafes are 7,585, according to Trai report. The most preferred technology used by internet service providers to provide broadband in India is Digital Subscriber line (DSL) and it constitutes 85.12%. This is followed by cable modem technology (5.75%), ethernet LAN (5.09%), wireless 3.48%, leased lines (0.32%), fiber (0.23%), and others (0.01%).
The state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) is offering internet access service since 2005. BSNL commissioned a multi-gigabit, multi-protocol, IP infrastructure through National Internet Backbone-II (NIB-II), that will provide services through the same backbone and broadband access network. The broadband service will be available on DSL technology (on the same wire that is used for plain old telephone service), spanning 198 cities. NIB-II conceived by BSNL will provide infrastructure for providing number of value added services to broadband customers countrywide and to help accelerate the internet revolution in India.
Bharti airtel offers broadband internet access through DSL, internet leased lines, and MPLS. It offers broadband (DSL), data and telephone services (fixedline) in 87 cities with growing focus on various data solutions for the small & medium business (SMB) segment. The company had 3.3 mn customers of which 1.4 mn have subscribed to broadband /internet services, as on March 31, 2012.
The company ended the year with non-voice revenue contributing over 50% of the total revenue. During the fiscal 2011-12, the company launched online sales as a channel for DSL acquisition and has also doubled the speeds to a minimum speed of 2 Mbps for all customers in the top 14 cities and to 1 Mbps in the balance cities with an objective of enhancing customer experience. airtel took the lead in launching 4G services in India starting with Kolkata and subsequently in Bengaluru. Besides this, it has plans to launch 4G in Karnataka, Maharashtra (including Mumbai), Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, and Kerala.
MTNL provides TriBand internet services through dial-up and DSL. It provides games on-demand, video on-demand, and IPTV services in India through TriBand. It has introduced Broadband Internet access plans (TriBand) targeted at homes and small businesses. MTNL has upgraded existing TriBand (Broadband) connections for a speed of up to 2 MB/s. This service is at a cost of 55.3826 ($0.99) per month. Every additional 1 MB download over the 200 MB limit costs Rs 1.11873 ($0.02) extra. MTNL launched fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) triple-play high speed broadband service with core network speed up to 10 Gbit/s in Delhi. It is offering 3G services under the name of ‘MTNL 3G Jadoo.’
Reliance Communications offers internet access to 518 towns all with seamless handover to high speed 1x service across 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages. It expanded its CDMA wireless broadband service with a downlink speed of upto 3.1 Mbps and uplink speed of upto 1.8 Mbps. It offers the service 10.
Reliance will also leverage its broadband network to support the requirements for homeland security applications and services, which can benefit from the advantages of low latency and assured quality of services that are integral to fourth generation (4G) networks. Infotel Broadband, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, had won a 20 Mhz slot pan-India broadband