LCO providing different plans than mentioned on airtel website.

[bnee]

I'm currently subscribed to BSNL, but their service is unreliable with frequent disruptions almost every week.

Therefore, I want to switch to another ISP. In my small town, the only alternative is Airtel, provided by a third party.
No landline number was provided with the connection. When inquired whether the IP would be public or private, there seemed to be confusion. It appears he confused private ip with static ip. He said we purchased bandwidth in bulk and distribute it among subscribers.

LCO quoted me following plans for airtel.
Rs 500 - 30mbps
Rs 600 - 40mbps
Rs 700 - 50mbps
Rs 850 - 75mbps
Rs 1000 - 100mbps
Payment to be made directly to him not to airtel link.

What should I do, should I go for 50mbps plan?
Do third-party LCO's in your locality modify airtel official plans too?

 

[minuteman]

LCO scamming you Airtel's plan is cheaper than you mentioned here:
₹499 - 40 mbps
₹799 - 100 mbps
₹999 - 200 mbps
These are the plans provided by Airtel

 

[Skye]

He said we purchased bandwidth in bulk and distribute it among subscribers.

Isn't that what local ISPs do? So, they are not exactly Airtel but using their bandwidth to offer their services. No idea why it is so expensive though, here local ISPs are much cheaper compared to Airtel/Jio.

 

[Anurag Bhatia]

You should go for it. Very likely it would be better than BSNL. As I understand they are not Airtel LCO right? Who they buy from is a different thing all together but broadly it's not Airtel Xstream fibre LCO delivering Airtel branded services, correct? Your message sounds like you feel they are an Airtel LCO while they are simply a downstream ISP of Airtel.



A few things to give you better idea:

1. LCOs cannot buy from a transit player directly and re-sell. Basically to sell bandwidth in India one needs a license. For selling ISP services there is ISP license (Unified license with ISP authorization). Once a player has it, they become an ISP. It won't be correct to refer to them as LCO. Most of small players do not take ISP license but instead work an ISP. ISP does the end user billing, CAF, maintains connectivity till LCO and LCO is responsible for last mile. In that case it's LCO. Airtel does works with LCO but that us Xstream fibre branded internet. I am not aware of any Airtel offering where they let LCO sell under their license but without Airtel's own branding.
2. Bandwidth pricing is not always about absolute low one can do. It has many more factors including competition pricing, their own cost, density in area, time to break even on their investment etc. Thus a given LCO can be expensive or cheaper than telco offered services. It depends on area to area. Often they are cheaper to compensate for the lower brand value (smaller ISPs are not well known, do not have as strong branding as of popular telco run ISPs).
3. It's common for small players to start as LCO work with ISP, later become an ISP start by getting IP transit from some smaller player, later become downstream of Airtel or Tata Comm etc and at some stage take circuits to large cities to peer, get cache nodes of Google/Facebook etc and offload 80% of their traffic. Many of ISPs near large cities do have transit from these players but barely 20-30% of their traffic actually hits transits. So transit pricing is important but not the sole thing for end user pricing.

 

[bnee]

@Zuke Sparse user base, and only BSNL is other player, which is not known for its good service.

 

[bnee]

@Anurag Bhatia I wasn't aware about this distinction between LCO and ISP. Thanks for clearing that part.
After my interaction with LCO, it can be concluded that service is not XStream branded, as payment method and plans both differ.
Since you pointed out airtel doesn't provide downstream services to LCO, I'm wondering he might be using airtel brand name to sell services.
I will try it and see how it goes.

How come these LCO's which are not ISP provide public IP to subscribers?

 

[anubhav11]

You can easily check the isp by visiting bgp.he.net from that network, or ask your lco to visit this page while using that isp’s connection.

 

[invisible007]

seems costly , iam using excitel (partnered by LCO) and they take 4800 rs for me for an year and give almost 200 mbps speeds
that costs me only 400rs for a month and NO GST
and using it from last 2 years , no major disconnection / downtimes so far .

 

[Anurag Bhatia]

After my interaction with LCO, it can be concluded that service is not XStream branded, as payment method and plans both differ.
Since you pointed out airtel doesn't provide downstream services to LCO, I'm wondering he might be using airtel brand name to sell services.
I will try it and see how it goes.

Well people say all sort of things depending on where they are sitting and what they view as "the internet".
Let me give you example of one of the two ISP serving me at home: Siti broadband. From my home to LCO is LCO fibre, from LCO to Siti core location in the the city is Siti's fibre, from Siti's core location to Noida is Airtel NLD. At Noida they offload 70-75% probably on peerings over other leased fibre within Noida region and for remaining 20-25% it's a mix of Sify and Jio.

Now depending on who you speak to - this can be "Siti broadband" or Airtel re-sold broadband or Jio indirectly.

How come these LCO's which are not ISP provide public IP to subscribers?

LCO is responsible for last mile only. IP address is provided from the BNG often managed by the ISP partner.

Broadly LCO does following:

1. Connect and aggregate users in given area over their own last mile fibre. LCO invests in that and is responsible for cuts.
2. Often LCO is responsible for ONU though that is changing as well. These days many ISP want their specific locked ONUs.
3. LCO is responsible for hosting OLTs, bunch of switches to aggregate OLTs etc. They then hand this capacity to ISP at or near them.

ISP typically does following:

1. ISP connects LCO to some NLD provider (Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Comm, TTSL, and few others) and ultimately get them to it's core location.
2. ISP manages mix of IP transit, peering (if any), caching servers, getting IPs from APNIC or IRINN etc.
3. ISP is responsible for allocating IPs / CGNAT tracking for end users and maintaining that log for lawful enforcement.
4. ISP maintains ISP license, relation and various compliance of DoT and pay the license fees to the regulator.

Some roles have changed over time. Like in past ISPs always wanted LCOs to roll out ONUs and take care of deployment, replacement of ONUs etc. But over time more and more LCOs have switched ISPs due to commercial disputes and ISPs have suddenly lost hundreds of their users due to unlocked ONUs. And these days ISPs like to give own CPE with ONU+Wifi + closed model so it cannot be replaced easily if LCO decides to change ISP.

 

[Anurag Bhatia]

You can easily check the isp by visiting bgp.he.net from that network, or ask your lco to visit this page while using that isp’s connection.

That's a good option for sure. He might be surprised to find himself on a network which is not even in downstream of Airtel. LCO might have said Airtel because it's Airtel NLD drop at some BTS nearby.