Have we reached a saturation point for broadband speeds in India?

[Kyle Crane]

Lately i have been noticing less and less people are caring about internet speed be it 4G/5G or Broadband unlike how it was just a few years ago

Last Major incident in broadband sector in India was in 2019 when one day Airtel suddenly dropped fiber rollout with 3333GB data limit
Airtel Home Broadband gets a new brand identity with ‘Xstream Fibre’

After that we saw Jio Fiber follow suit and so did all the major broadband players slowly increasing FUP to 3.3TB and then it just became a standard which is followed till this dated ,now there are a few weirdos like me who keep asking when are we gonna get a change FUP or get rid of FUP altogether but thats another discussion

since 2019 Jio and Airtel have been offering 1gbps broadband in India which was unthinkable just a few years ago ,but now in 2025 6 years later its still the highest end plan with no current plans (pun intended) to offer higher speeds to home consumers and they are actually correct about it . Most Indian homes with broadband actually have a avg speed of somewhere around 30-100mbps since 30mbps is offered by Jio and 40mbps is offered by Airtel and not to mention how these are the cheapest plans offered by local ISP's too

and suffice to say 99% is actually happy with paying 600rs or so for a 50 or 100mbps connection

ISP's dont have any return on investment if they decide to increase backhaul capacity and get new network switches which can handle more users and maybe double the speed from 50mbps to 100mbps

But who knows maybe next year when Jio turns 10 year old , what if we see Jio pull this stunt of doubling broadband speeds from 30 to 100mbps as base ,100mbps to 200 and so on just to kill the remaining broadband sector since they have the capacity to actually handle that much speed ,then we might see Airtel give double the speeds too

More and More people take internet speeds for granted now ,its a good thing since we are significantly ahead of many nations in fiber roll out but then its just a feeling that we are stuck at these speeds for a little too long now but then its just a me thing to write about anyways i will find and add avg broadband speed in india

Avg download speeds in India 2013-2025, from steam


Dec 2013
Source: SteamDB


Mid 2015
Souce: SteamDB


Early 2019
Source: SteamDB


Dec 2025
Source: SteamDB

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

The average wages in India are already quite low.
Suppose you earn 10,000 INR p.m and want to get Airtel's 200Mbps plan, then that is already 10%+ of your income.

The broadband penetration in India is some of the lowest, and it's only thanks to cellular you are seeing these Steam statistics. Hence, that there is a lot more market cap to gain.
Plus, the current prices of broadband (thanks to Jio) is good and on-par or even better than a lot of countries.

We are nowhere close to saturation and there is a lot more to do and gain, however the country and its people do need to upgrade as well for that.

 

[Kyle Crane]

Agreed

Broadband is the last choice for people who want a dedicated connection otherwise people won’t shy away from downloading large files from 5G hotspot

Tho I hope we some changes man ,it’s been so long and everything looks the same

Btw how’s broadband in ur place if u don’t mind me asking? @Lolita_Magnum

 

[unnecessary]

The big 2 telcos of India won't be moving a needle towards consumer upgrades for same price, just compare 3rd largest ISP after these 2... ACT & their plans, you'll get the picture. But I wish if Jio just removed 3.3 TB cap and make broadband FUP free just as their 5G, Airtel will follow them and so will other 3.3 TB ISP's and that's gonna be good. I've already left the hopes long ago that they're gonna increase the speed without increasing prices, but maybe they can remove FUP. Who knows, until then I'll keep using what I currently use.

 

[HC1337]

Really hoping for the big telcos to remove FUP from atleast wireline broadband altogether, that would be really nice ngl.

There are very few ISPs which actually give truly unlimited FUP and afaik it doesn't cost them anything extra to allow more FUP and they only have to bear the cost for the size of the pipe (Speed of the pipe, ex - 100mbps).

Alliance and Excitel are going in a good direction for this I would guess, although mostly peered bandwidth but that's still an option. (Mostly that's what most people use anyways).

Same with providing more options for speed and technologies (2.5G or 10G or XGSPON), along with 6Ghz Wi-Fi tech.

And as @Lolita_Magnum said, the penetration is still pretty poor, I can still vouch for it in my circle, locality or state alone how many people will just stick to 4G/5G even if it harms their phone more in comparison to just opting in for a fiber connection or even if they have to recharge with 1.2k plans for each of their family members. Some are just stubborn. They will take credit for mobile recharges and justify it's need (which tbh is not entirely incorrect) but won't get a fiber connection at home for all.

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

The FUP thing is here to stay unless TRAI change their own rules.

For example, here in Ireland you get truly unlimited usage, however during peak times if it's observed that you have used way above than the average than your traffic is deprioritized. Same thing goes for Cellular.

I remember Airtel had introduced a "premium" mobile plan once, but had to discontinue it due to TRAI rules.

@Kyle Crane I am using Eir (formerly a state owned entity), is probably the largest provider here.
Since, most servers and CDNs are usually located in Europe/Netherlands, I get good latency and performance overall. No issues.

 

[Kyle Crane]

I remember Airtel had introduced a "premium" mobile plan once, but had to discontinue it due to TRAI rules.

i guess something similar was announced by Vodafone back in 2019, priority 4G for redx customers and TRAI forced them to discontinue

 

[f0r3he4d]

we are lucky that atleast we have a fiber drops at all residences. lot of western nations still rely on docsis. so in the case of future pon tech we are ready

 

[markiv]

FUPs will stay, but we should be able to see considerable relaxation in FUP limit for higher plan. Next pon tech change is 10-15times costlier for ont itself that's why it is not implemented. Need relaxation in gst and licence fee or atleast new player to stimulate the market(gst and licence fee take away 26% of their revenue)

 

[Trex]

I mentioned this many times BSNL is good if it works for you. They increased bandwidth for all plans and higher FUP. For me earlier it was 150Mbps for 999, now it is 200Mbps with 5000GB FUP.