Airtel Broadband to double broadband speeds by June 2010 #airtelsucks
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Funkatronic
Casual Gentleman
mmm airtel is not updating 2mbps to 4mbps from what i have read.
That wouldn't make sense, as the 1mbps users are getting bumped to 2. And some of those plans are also on the 100GB FUP aye? It would anger quite a lot of the 2mbps customer base if people started getting speeds similar to them without having to pay a crapload and a half.
Any links to where you read this btw?
That wouldn't make sense, as the 1mbps users are getting bumped to 2. And some of those plans are also on the 100GB FUP aye? It would anger quite a lot of the 2mbps customer base if people started getting speeds similar to them without having to pay a crapload and a half.
Any links to where you read this btw?
this is the original press release:
• Redefines broadband threshold
• Upgrades all existing customers to a minimum of 512 Kbps speed at no extra cost
• Doubles broadband speeds of 512 Kbps to 1 Mbps and 1 Mbps to 2 Mbps at no extra cost
• Launches Impatience Plans- offers 4Mbps plans, starting Rs.899/ month
they would most likely suggest you to migrate to the new 2mbps plan.
• Redefines broadband threshold
• Upgrades all existing customers to a minimum of 512 Kbps speed at no extra cost
• Doubles broadband speeds of 512 Kbps to 1 Mbps and 1 Mbps to 2 Mbps at no extra cost
• Launches Impatience Plans- offers 4Mbps plans, starting Rs.899/ month
they would most likely suggest you to migrate to the new 2mbps plan.
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Funkatronic
Casual Gentleman
Yup, I was wary about that, that's why i asked the Airtel Engineer when he came around to my place last time. He said the 2mbps connections would get bumped to 4. But then again, he might just be theorizing as well. And calling Customer Care would be an exercise in patience, as they would probably know very little of this. Oh well, I guess one has to wait out through June and see if one gets a speed boost.As one of my friends said, being a high speed unlimited plan user in India, is equivalent to being the low man on the totem pole.
just be prepared to call in airtel customer care in case 2mbps plans are not bumped to 4mbps so that you can switched to the cheaper 1mbps plan that would become 2mbps at that time! airtel usually does not change your plan when they launch new plans. this is an unusual step taken by the company updating an existing plan. my only worry is that they might add on the FUP crap to customers who are currently on a NON-FUP plan for some reason or by some mistake.
Funkatronic
Casual Gentleman
/\/\ that happened to me, I was on the "once" non FUP plan, 2mbps @ 2499, but now they've put a 100GB FUP on me, which is slightly annoying. Luckily, its a download only FUP, so I get throttled to 1mbps quite rarely
mgcarley
Founder, Hayai Broadband
they would most likely suggest you to migrate to the new 2mbps plan.
It sounds like Airtel is confusing the hell out of customers and prospective customers alike. I know if I was currently on a 2Mbit/s plan paying like Rs3000 for that, and the 1Mbit/s users who pay... what, 1699... were bumped up to my speed for free, I'd be a bit pissed. I suspect that if the FUP is 100-150GB I wouldn't be downloading so much that I'd want to stay on paying double the price - I'd probably have to be the type that normally downloads 300-400GB a month for that to be worthwhile.
Yup, I was wary about that, that's why i asked the Airtel Engineer when he came around to my place last time. He said the 2mbps connections would get bumped to 4. But then again, he might just be theorizing as well. And calling Customer Care would be an exercise in patience, as they would probably know very little of this. Oh well, I guess one has to wait out through June and see if one gets a speed boost.
As one of my friends said, being a high speed unlimited plan user in India, is equivalent to being the low man on the totem pole.
I'm in the same camp as Admin on this one: more likely they'd be trying to sway people towards the 4Mbit/s impatience plans.
just be prepared to call in airtel customer care in case 2mbps plans are not bumped to 4mbps so that you can switched to the cheaper 1mbps plan that would become 2mbps at that time!
airtel usually does not change your plan when they launch new plans.
this is an unusual step taken by the company updating an existing plan.
my only worry is that they might add on the FUP crap to customers who are currently on a NON-FUP plan for some reason or by some mistake.
I think when we change our plans, we will change them for all users. Hopefully the plans themselves will remain the same, one the pricing will come down over time. I'm already pushing to re-negotiate our wholesale bandwidth prices!
At the end of the day though, Fair Usage Policies are not entirely unreasonable (well, if they have a decent amount anyway... 30GB not good, 150+GB is OK except for the most extreme downloaders).
I look at it from the point of view where you currently pay for your electricity and phone per unit (KWh or per minute), and no-one seems to mind that.
Using the same analogy of electricity, you don't get different voltages of power based on how much you pay for your line. Sucks if the industrial estate next door pays the same amount for his power as you do but he's running a bunch of machines, lighting, multitudes of computers and so forth, whereas all you've got is a fridge, a fan, A/C, a computer, a TV and a bunch of other small devices.
For the internet, I'd compare this to our data plans: 1 speed, pay for what you use, and for us, this is generally better for business than flat-rate/"unlimited" pricing. Does anyone here have a flat-rate electricity or phone plan? I thought not. So why should the Internet be different?
I'm both for and against Fair Usage Policies: so long as they're reasonable at both ends, I'm OK. I could understand a policy of ~100-200GB per month based on my knowledge of wholesale pricing - and for how many people is this too little really? But I don't understand policies of less than 100GB in the event that the user is paying like Rs2000 per month (here's lookin' at you Airtel) and the company essentially appears to be profiteering from the early adopters or those with a little bit of money to throw around on "luxuries" such as Internet access.
This is one more reason I've been pushing the notion that providers should simply take the speed limits off all DSL lines and charge only for data, and if they want to have "unlimited" plans, then they can offer you 512k-2mbit options at an appropriate price.
It sounds like Airtel is confusing the hell out of customers and prospective customers alike. I know if I was currently on a 2Mbit/s plan paying like Rs3000 for that, and the 1Mbit/s users who pay... what, 1699... were bumped up to my speed for free, I'd be a bit pissed. I suspect that if the FUP is 100-150GB I wouldn't be downloading so much that I'd want to stay on paying double the price - I'd probably have to be the type that normally downloads 300-400GB a month for that to be worthwhile.
Yup, I was wary about that, that's why i asked the Airtel Engineer when he came around to my place last time. He said the 2mbps connections would get bumped to 4. But then again, he might just be theorizing as well. And calling Customer Care would be an exercise in patience, as they would probably know very little of this. Oh well, I guess one has to wait out through June and see if one gets a speed boost.
As one of my friends said, being a high speed unlimited plan user in India, is equivalent to being the low man on the totem pole.
I'm in the same camp as Admin on this one: more likely they'd be trying to sway people towards the 4Mbit/s impatience plans.
just be prepared to call in airtel customer care in case 2mbps plans are not bumped to 4mbps so that you can switched to the cheaper 1mbps plan that would become 2mbps at that time!
airtel usually does not change your plan when they launch new plans.
this is an unusual step taken by the company updating an existing plan.
my only worry is that they might add on the FUP crap to customers who are currently on a NON-FUP plan for some reason or by some mistake.
I think when we change our plans, we will change them for all users. Hopefully the plans themselves will remain the same, one the pricing will come down over time. I'm already pushing to re-negotiate our wholesale bandwidth prices!
At the end of the day though, Fair Usage Policies are not entirely unreasonable (well, if they have a decent amount anyway... 30GB not good, 150+GB is OK except for the most extreme downloaders).
I look at it from the point of view where you currently pay for your electricity and phone per unit (KWh or per minute), and no-one seems to mind that.
Using the same analogy of electricity, you don't get different voltages of power based on how much you pay for your line. Sucks if the industrial estate next door pays the same amount for his power as you do but he's running a bunch of machines, lighting, multitudes of computers and so forth, whereas all you've got is a fridge, a fan, A/C, a computer, a TV and a bunch of other small devices.
For the internet, I'd compare this to our data plans: 1 speed, pay for what you use, and for us, this is generally better for business than flat-rate/"unlimited" pricing. Does anyone here have a flat-rate electricity or phone plan? I thought not. So why should the Internet be different?
I'm both for and against Fair Usage Policies: so long as they're reasonable at both ends, I'm OK. I could understand a policy of ~100-200GB per month based on my knowledge of wholesale pricing - and for how many people is this too little really? But I don't understand policies of less than 100GB in the event that the user is paying like Rs2000 per month (here's lookin' at you Airtel) and the company essentially appears to be profiteering from the early adopters or those with a little bit of money to throw around on "luxuries" such as Internet access.
This is one more reason I've been pushing the notion that providers should simply take the speed limits off all DSL lines and charge only for data, and if they want to have "unlimited" plans, then they can offer you 512k-2mbit options at an appropriate price.
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mgcarley
Founder, Hayai Broadband
well 100GB FUP limits are pretty bad for plans with 1/2 mbps speeds. they are not that bad for plans with 512kbps. not that i am defending them. but the limits are rather absurd.
It also goes in line with Indian expectations.
FUPs in most other countries are within this limit and customers pay a whole lot more for it. GBP20/INR1400 is about an average price for DSL in the UK, but FUPs are often hovering at about 40GB (of course, I generalize), whereas in NZ for a data cap of 40GB you will pay about NZ$120/INR3800. In Australia 50GB will cost about AUD$50/INR2000.
However I digress. Considering the wholesale prices, costs and taking in to account all the different people who receive a share of the revenue as it is now, I think an FUP of 200GB for about Rs2k could be a reasonable expectation, if not now, then in the near future.
The FUP shouldn't really have parity with the speed per se, it should be appropriate to the price paid by the consumer. That's why I think our data plans are right in the sense that each customer can know that they will receive a certain amount of usage at whatever speed his line will give, and why I could only hope that Indian ISPs will take away speed as a factor from their data plans. MTNL has it half-right with 2Mbit/s being a typical speed allowance on their data plans, but they could still do better.
From a consumers point of view, I fully understand the wanting of unlimited plans and so forth, but there is almost no consistancy between offerings. If there is going to be an FUP, as mentioned, it should be relative to the price. 512kbit/s for Rs599, 1Mbit/s for Rs999, 2Mbit/s for 1999, with FUP of 50, 100 and 200Gbyte/s respectively might work, but as of now there is like 1Mbit/s for RsXXX and 2Mbit/s for RsYYY but they have the same FUP. Why should I pay more for 5GB at 2Mbit/s than I do for 5GB at 512kbit/s? Same lines. Same equipment. Same effective allowance.
The current way just seems silly to me. The ideas behind FUPs are to make it so that the few heavy downloaders out there don't ruin it for the majority, not to limit almost every user of the service. If we implement them, that's how we'd do it: FUP should be enough so that while people can download 300-400GB in a month, most people shouldn't, and fewer still should even have to worry that there is an FUP on the service.
It also goes in line with Indian expectations.
FUPs in most other countries are within this limit and customers pay a whole lot more for it. GBP20/INR1400 is about an average price for DSL in the UK, but FUPs are often hovering at about 40GB (of course, I generalize), whereas in NZ for a data cap of 40GB you will pay about NZ$120/INR3800. In Australia 50GB will cost about AUD$50/INR2000.
However I digress. Considering the wholesale prices, costs and taking in to account all the different people who receive a share of the revenue as it is now, I think an FUP of 200GB for about Rs2k could be a reasonable expectation, if not now, then in the near future.
The FUP shouldn't really have parity with the speed per se, it should be appropriate to the price paid by the consumer. That's why I think our data plans are right in the sense that each customer can know that they will receive a certain amount of usage at whatever speed his line will give, and why I could only hope that Indian ISPs will take away speed as a factor from their data plans. MTNL has it half-right with 2Mbit/s being a typical speed allowance on their data plans, but they could still do better.
From a consumers point of view, I fully understand the wanting of unlimited plans and so forth, but there is almost no consistancy between offerings. If there is going to be an FUP, as mentioned, it should be relative to the price. 512kbit/s for Rs599, 1Mbit/s for Rs999, 2Mbit/s for 1999, with FUP of 50, 100 and 200Gbyte/s respectively might work, but as of now there is like 1Mbit/s for RsXXX and 2Mbit/s for RsYYY but they have the same FUP. Why should I pay more for 5GB at 2Mbit/s than I do for 5GB at 512kbit/s? Same lines. Same equipment. Same effective allowance.
The current way just seems silly to me. The ideas behind FUPs are to make it so that the few heavy downloaders out there don't ruin it for the majority, not to limit almost every user of the service. If we implement them, that's how we'd do it: FUP should be enough so that while people can download 300-400GB in a month, most people shouldn't, and fewer still should even have to worry that there is an FUP on the service.
