Hathway Broadband, which has over six lakh subscribers for its cable and fibre-based services, said it has upgraded its network and will soon be providing its users with up to twice as much data in the same package.
Hathway provides its high-speed broadband service in around 20 cities and in much of Kerala (via Asianet). Hathway currently operates on a fiber-to-home model in Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata, and on CISCO’s Docsis technology in other places.
“Post completion of technical infrastructure upgradation project, network is ready for 50% increase in speed and 200% increase in data capacity,” a Hathway official said.
He added that the move will provide “up to 100 % increase in data limits across cities.”
“This is to encourage customers to get more out of their home broadband and will deliver better value for money.”
The move comes in the wake of emerging competition from Reliance Jio’s Gigabit fiber service, which will also operate in largely the same cities where Hathway has its broadband service running. Though Reliance Jio has not yet revealed its plans yet, they are expected to massively disruptive, if their wireless pricing is anything to go by.
While cable-based services provide speeds of up to 10 Mbps, Hathway gives up to 150 Mbps on fiber to home services. Both networks have been upgraded or are in the process of being upgraded, the company said.
While the cable broadband technology is being upgraded to Docsis 3.1 from 3.0, the fiber-to-home network is being upgraded to support higher speeds as well. It is also putting in Oracle’s billing software and CISCO’s subscription management solutions as well.
“Currently, we are offering 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 150 Mbps packages for GPON (fiber) consumers, and the network is being designed to have capacity for offering 1 Gbps speed to end customer,” the company official said.
The company has its broadband signals available in around 42.5 lakh homes across the country, out of which around 6.2 lakh have subscribed to the service. On average, a subscriber pays around Rs 750 per month for the service.
Its plans tend to be cheaper in smaller cities.
In places like Mumbai, Indore and Chennai, for example, it charges Rs 1,500 plus taxes for a 50 Mbps connection with a fair usage limit of 200 GB per month. After the limit is hit, the speed drops to 3 Mbps. A similar plan with a 100 GB cap is priced at Rs 1,000 per month in Mumbai.
In Surat, it provides a 25 Mbps plan with a 60 GB cap at Rs 1,055 per month plus taxes. Speed drops to 2 Mbps after the limit. In
The cheapest plans are perhaps in Baroda. Here, one can get a 10 Mbps, 500-GB-per-month connection at just Rs 7,500 per year, which works out to just Rs 625 per month.