Hayai Broadband Lite

[mgcarley]

I always thought those kind of plans were just a way of low-balling the customer.

I don't think I've ever seen such billing before, but I'm sure the ISPs in India have tried almost every trick in the book on their customers to try and extract maximum cash from you well before I came along

 

[WiZaRd]

I imagine something like this:
Rs272 (Rs299) - 10GB
Rs407 (Rs449) - 20GB
Rs543 (Rs599) - 30GB
Rs770 (Rs849) - Flat-Rate with 45GB FUP

Speed: 5mbit/s. Hayai Zone etc still included and not counting in these data amounts, but not heavily advertised because the target audience (your parents and grandparents) probably won't care.

Ideally I want all of the plans to be flat-rate as in pricing, so each plan would have an FUP similar to the values above with a speed drop to 256k after that is reached (but it should be unlikely that anyone in the target audience would reach that limit).


All sounds great but if these plans are indeed targeted at people who are lite users and there will be restrictions on P2P and bittorent traffic from the very beginning. Then why are you reducing the speeds to 256kbps once the fair usage is crossed?

Makes no sense as Why not just reduce it to 1mbps or something along those lines and then give the customer the option to either migrate to a higher plan or continue using the 1mbps speed for the remainder of the billing cycle by paying Rs.XXX.
(Should be very nominal)
I believe...by doing this you can simply do away with the 256kbps that almost all the other ISP's are dropping down too.
This will no doubt help in advertising your plans "Plan speeds ____ and at no point of time will the speeds drop below 1mbps, unlike certain other ISPs"

And i don't think anyone would be able to abuse your connection as there are/will be restrictions in place. So reducing the speeds to 256kbps kinda defeats the purpose of having a high speed internet connection

Also what do you think the initial installation charges would come too?

 

[akshay12]

it will be better to bring a pop up at 80% of fair usage policy is reached and than say recharge with Rs 100 to continue with this much data .The concept of speed reduced to 256kbps suxx

 

[mgcarley]

All sounds great but if these plans are indeed targeted at people who are lite users and there will be restrictions on P2P and bittorent traffic from the very beginning. Then why are you reducing the speeds to 256kbps once the fair usage is crossed?

Makes no sense as Why not just reduce it to 1mbps or something along those lines and then give the customer the option to either migrate to a higher plan or continue using the 1mbps speed for the remainder of the billing cycle by paying Rs.XXX.
(Should be very nominal)
I believe...by doing this you can simply do away with the 256kbps that almost all the other ISP's are dropping down too.
This will no doubt help in advertising your plans "Plan speeds ____ and at no point of time will the speeds drop below 1mbps, unlike certain other ISPs"

And i don't think anyone would be able to abuse your connection as there are/will be restrictions in place. So reducing the speeds to 256kbps kinda defeats the purpose of having a high speed internet connection

Also what do you think the initial installation charges would come too?

I agree, however a speed drop to 256k rather than say 1mbit/s (or even leaving the speed untouched) is normally necessary due to the per GB cost incurred (it's not the speed, it's the data). That's why pretty much every FUP plan in the country drops all the way down to 256k, even from 4mbit/s. However I still agree: we could be different and mandate that the speed drops no lower than 2mbit/s.

But at the end of the day it doesn't matter much, and here's why: we simply don't expect people to reach these limits. I think that the FUP on the flat-rate plan I think is sufficiently high-enough for this audience and I don't believe that they should never have to deal with a drop in speed.

Additionally this FUP would probably only apply to the flat-rate plan (Rs770) - the other plans I think should be data-only. Couple of reasons for this.

1. We are actively trying to prevent a speed drop - otherwise then we face the issue of people only buying the 10GB plan, using 10GB and then being only on 256k for the remainder of the month, which sucks both for them (slow speeds) and for us (network congestion).
2. If you buy and do manage to use all of your 10, 20 or 30GB plan, we'll be happy to sell you another amount of data at our advertised prices (another 6GB for Rs85 for example, 12GB for about Rs170 or so). Not really greedy (compared to MTNL's Rs500/GB, Airtels Rs400-600/GB) - and in the unlikely event that they have to purchase more data in a given month, at least that purchase will allow you to keep the same speed.
3. The limits I think are sufficiently high for the intended audience (feel free to prove me wrong). I would even go so far as to suggest that most people will actually fit in to the 10GB plan. My parents do - they use Skype video a few times a month, surf a fair bit and read a bunch of emails a day, and they barely touch 5GB.

---------- Post added at 01:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:29 PM ----------

it will be better to bring a pop up at 80% of fair usage policy is reached and than say recharge with Rs 100 to continue with this much data .The concept of speed reduced to 256kbps suxx

I agree with that also, but keep in mind we're only looking at an FUP on the very top plan, and even then this plan only applies to our wireless product which is NOT intended to particularly heavy users.

The first-3 plans would be data-only (as explained above). I think it's better for us to give far more than is needed than not enough and then go and charge megabucks for it (in some cases as high as Rs800 or more per GB).

For heavy users, I think we've already got a suitable wireline product featuring which, while being more expensive, doesn't have any restrictions/FUPs.

 

[WiZaRd]

So at the end of the day, what you are trying to say that the FUP is their as fail safe instead of being a sore point.So if you look at it that way....all makes sense.It is however pointless to talk about this any further at this stage....where nothing has been finalised by you and there is no definite date as to when the services will be rolled out for mass consumption Also which thread/post should i look at to see the plans for your wired service?And when are you planning to visit Gurgaon/Delhi NCR?

 

[mgcarley]

So at the end of the day, what you are trying to say that the FUP is their as fail safe instead of being a sore point.
So if you look at it that way....all makes sense.

It is however pointless to talk about this any further at this stage....where nothing has been finalised by you and there is no definite date as to when the services will be rolled out for mass consumption

Also which thread/post should i look at to see the plans for your wired service?
And when are you planning to visit Gurgaon/Delhi NCR?

Yeah, it's there as a failsafe. Wireless services can be rolled out quite quickly - setup time is very short (couple of hours to ready a neighbourhood) and installation at the premises is relatively painless.

Tentative wired pricelist can be found at Powered by Google Docs - I've been revising it already, so it will be outdated before we launch

Services are all waiting on me and my lawyers now. I hope to know tomorrow whether I'll be delayed by 1 week or 2 getting home to India. When I do return, I'll be spending my first couple of weeks back home in India touring the main centers (in particular NCR and Chennai, but others too) finalizing details with people on the ground in those cities and meeting potential customers (and signing them up).

 

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[WiZaRd]

So when you do land up in Delhi, be sure to make the short trip to Gurgaon to Sector-23/Palam Vihar area.I will have half a dozen customers lined up (all wired) and loads more for the wireless service.And if this will happen sometime before the end of this year then i will continue suffering at Airtel hands for a few more months instead of spending money on switching to another shit ISP....Also can you like pm me what kind of initial costs customers would be looking at (Equipment+Installation+Activation) for both wired and wireless. This would help me in convincing my friends Edit 1: Just checked the pricesIn the night flat rate, is the day usage quota for the entire month or on every day basis?And in the night booster plan....there is no limit on transfer on these right?Also what kinda upstream speeds are we looking at?Edit 2: Just realised that the colour scheme for that document which lists out the plans uses the same colour combination as Airtel. You might wanna change it before you send it the printers for flyers and inserts

 

[mgcarley]

So when you do land up in Delhi, be sure to make the short trip to Gurgaon to Sector-23/Palam Vihar area.
I will have half a dozen customers lined up (all wired) and loads more for the wireless service.
And if this will happen sometime before the end of this year then i will continue suffering at Airtel hands for a few more months instead of spending money on switching to another shit ISP....

Also can you like pm me what kind of initial costs customers would be looking at (Equipment+Installation+Activation) for both wired and wireless. This would help me in convincing my friends


For wireless I think it should be included in the plan price. For wired I think we were looking at Rs1,100 including taxes, but this is subject to change. Personally I would like to abolish it altogether.

Edit 1:
Just checked the prices
In the night flat rate, is the day usage quota for the entire month or on every day basis?
And in the night booster plan....there is no limit on transfer on these right?
Also what kinda upstream speeds are we looking at?


1. Month.
2. Correct.
3. I wanted to do symmetrical, but my arm was twisted, so 50% the downstream speeds (5 down, 2.5 up, 100 down, 50 up etc). Some of the equipment we'll be giving customers is capable of up to 2.4Gbit/s down, 1.2Gbit/s up.

Edit 2:
Just realised that the colour scheme for that document which lists out the plans uses the same colour combination as Airtel. You might wanna change it before you send it the printers for flyers and inserts

I know. Whatever ends up being printed will be professionally designed by the company that did our logo - this brochure is not professionally designed by them but they owe me the work since I paid for a whole package.

 

[WiZaRd]

And on the wired....the wiring would be fibre optics to our home or to the local node?Any installation cost under 2k (with 1k refundable) is fine by me as I did pay Airtel Rs.500 for installation 5 years back Symmetrical would have been terrific but this also sounds decent considering the minimum up speed will be 2.5mbps which is a remarkable jump from the current 500-600kbps Will the uploads be counted towards the Fair Usage limit? or is just the data downloaded?

 

[mgcarley]

And on the wired....the wiring would be fibre optics to our home or to the local node?
Any installation cost under 2k (with 1k refundable) is fine by me as I did pay Airtel Rs.500 for installation 5 years back

Symmetrical would have been terrific but this also sounds decent considering the minimum up speed will be 2.5mbps which is a remarkable jump from the current 500-600kbps

Will the uploads be counted towards the Fair Usage limit? or is just the data downloaded?

Airtel now charges Rs1,100 AFAIK, but this may include a security deposit.

I wanted symmetrical but it was... suggested... that this would "interfere" with other ISPs leased-line offerings. I think Tata etc are happy for us to have a consumer service and take away those customers, but for that service which costs >90% less and is of better quality and higher speed than their 50k-1 lakh per customer per month leased-line service apparently would piss them off.

Seriously.

I don't know many countries where leased-lines are even necessary anymore - in one of my offices in Finland we just had business-grade DSL (which is basically the same as consumer-grade DSL but costs a bit more, and even then, not that much - something like 99€ instead of 49€). In another office we just used the building's inbuilt connection which was basically an RJ-45 jack in the wall which went to a dedicated port which I assume went out to a big fiber connection... which was included in the office rental cost.

The idea is to make downtime negligible for all customers (consumer or business) so that we don't have to charge as much of a premium... if it's mission-critical and requires an SLA then yeah, maybe... but otherwise...

And no, uploads aren't counted in the same way: if you buy a 100GB plan, you get 100GB down + 100GB up - obviously we can't have people setting up seedboxes to seed 3TB of data while they only download 100GB per month.

Similar situation with the one FUP plan (assuming that's what we end up offering) and flat-rate wired plans.