Tata Play Fiber's 300/500 Mbps pricing makes no sense (went with YOU instead)

[jehunix]

Was checking broadband options for my place in Pune and looked at Tata Play Fiber. Their high speed plans are stupidly expensive and I genuinely don't get why.

500 Mbps for a year:

• TPF: ₹34,692 (and that's the discounted yearly price, comes to ~₹2,891/mo)
• YOU: ₹12,036 (~₹1,003/mo)

Almost 3x for the exact same speed. The 3 month plan is the same story, TPF ₹9,558 vs YOU ₹3,186.

And here's the annoying bit. On TPF you can't even get 500 (or 1000) Mbps on its own. It only comes with the 30+ OTT pack. So you're paying for 30 odd streaming apps you never wanted just to get the speed. 300 Mbps is the same, cheapest yearly is ₹21,948 with all that OTT baggage. I don't want the apps, I just want fast internet.

Also the yearly discount gets worse the faster you go. 100 Mbps gives you around 60% off if you pay yearly, but at 1000 Mbps it's barely 34%. So the costliest plans get the smallest discount. Makes no sense.

Their site says "unmatched pricing" lol. Yeah, unmatched alright.

Anyway I went with YOU 500 Mbps, 3 month plan (₹3,186). Will update here once it's installed (scheduled tomorrow), how speeds and latency actually hold up, especially in the evenings. If it's good I'll move to yearly.

Anyone on TPF high speed, what does that extra money actually get you? Asking seriously, because it just looks like OTT padding to me.

 

[unnecessary]

Do share your installation then internet experience along with service and speedtests.

 

[jehunix]

@unnecessary @tr1k0N4 Installation experience was really good. They put up the FAT box on my building terrace the next day, then handed me an RLTech GPON router (its very budget gpon router with bad range so I've raised a complaint to swap it for a Huawei / ZTE or Nokia unit today - it should be done in 1-2 days). But so far, no issues. The local team was polite and the whole install was quick and hassle-free.

Speed has been stable and solid, on WiFi too. Wired LAN gets me 500-600 Mbps and WiFi sits anywhere between 450-550 Mbps, pretty good for a symmetrical plan. Ping and routing is good as well, around 60-70ms to Singapore servers and its routing via TATA Communications.

 

[unnecessary]

Damn if Vi is routing it's broadband via tata transit then those ping issues won't be there, hopefully they'll expand to Rajasthan as well and probably have 1 Gig plans by then, I'll happily take one. Is it LVO based there or direct? Also what kind of cable they use? Cores? Also if you can share router/cable etc photos it would be cool, thanks for sharing your review.

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

I thought You Broadband was owned by Vi, how did Tata come into the picture? Could you share a trace?

 

[jehunix]

@unnecessary its direct in Pune. Not LVO based. Its true FTTH. They directly put fiber optic cable in my house. Ping on WiFi is pretty good honestly. Just 3-4ms. Its 1ms on LAN which I've connected to my Mac Mini.

 

[jehunix]

@Lolita_Magnum haven't got tata route after restart now but sharing traceroute nonetheless. latency to singapore has been good for me. between 60-70ms in most cases no matter what route vi / you uses.

jeh@hikaru ~ % traceroute to 202.94.70.1 (202.94.70.1), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  2.967 ms  1.874 ms  1.596 ms
 2  100.78.0.1 (100.78.0.1)  2.946 ms  5.952 ms  5.191 ms
 3  pune-core01.youbroadband.in (203.187.215.1)  5.685 ms  19.501 ms  13.931 ms
 4  123.63.152.142 (123.63.152.142)  5.068 ms  5.514 ms  3.717 ms
 5  182.19.108.217 (182.19.108.217)  23.282 ms  26.951 ms  146.775 ms
 6  * sng-b5-link.ip.twelve99.net (62.115.46.106)  226.876 ms *
 7  starhub-ic-359575.ip.twelve99-cust.net (62.115.164.217)  63.541 ms  63.710 ms  63.550 ms
 8  203.118.6.234 (203.118.6.234)  64.007 ms  63.800 ms  63.256 ms
 9  202.94.70.1 (202.94.70.1)  68.308 ms  67.124 ms  67.904 ms

 

[jehunix]

@Lolita_Magnum Tata Play Fiber traceroute for same IP.

jeh@hikaru ~ % traceroute 202.94.70.1     
traceroute to 202.94.70.1 (202.94.70.1), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254)  3.131 ms  67.179 ms  9.660 ms
 2  * * *
 3  * * *
 4  dsl-ncr-static-073.81.16.125.airtelbroadband.in (125.16.81.73)  11.720 ms  7.117 ms  8.093 ms
 5  116.119.161.6 (116.119.161.6)  71.699 ms
    116.119.164.255 (116.119.164.255)  66.085 ms
    116.119.42.5 (116.119.42.5)  63.091 ms
 6  203.117.32-209.unknown.starhub.net.sg (203.117.32.209)  58.854 ms  56.764 ms  57.357 ms
 7  203.118.7.74 (203.118.7.74)  59.846 ms  87.234 ms  63.770 ms
 8  202.94.70.1 (202.94.70.1)  58.322 ms  57.906 ms  76.219 ms

 

[jehunix]

Tata Play Fiber 500 Mbps 3-month plan (₹9,558) costs roughly the same as 9 months on YOU Broadband's 500 Mbps plan. TPF really looked at that pricing and thought yeah, seems reasonable. Annually it's ₹34,692 on TPF vs ₹12,036 on YOU. YOU is 65% cheaper annually.

My theory is TPF is straight up milking their 300-500 Mbps and 1 Gbps customers so they can offer competitive rates at the 50-100 Mbps range where most of their subscriber base sits. Classic move.

Yes, TPF has better routing and YOU sits 5-10ms higher on latency, but at ~₹1,000/month I really cannot bring myself to care. I'm not gonna pay ₹3-4k a month for freakin 500 Mbps. Will move to ACT when it hits my area. Till then, YOU is doing just fine.