On a day when the TRAI revised the Minimum Speed on an Internet Connection to qualify it as Broadband to 512 kbps in India, the Executive team at Airtel set a target for Mobile Data Vertical to garner 10 Crore Mobile Data [3G /4G] Subscribers and achieve revenue of Rs 10,000 Crore by end of 2015 from the same competing heads-on with incumbents and market disruptor Reliance Jio Infocomm. Airtel has reported 4.3 Cr and 5.8 Cr Mobile Data Subscribers with revenue of Rs 2230 Cr and Rs 4361 Cr for FY13 and FY14 respectively.
Airtel is already offering wide range of plans to boost data usage, continuing ~60% premium on 3G data tariffs versus 2G internet and a greater push for 3G services. Airtel prepaid 3G data offerings start as low as Rs13 for 25MB with a validity of one day, 1GB data at Rs252 for four weeks and at the top end Rs1,500 for 10GB data. Airtel even offers a wide range of dongle, tablet and blackberry plans. Blackberry plans start with Rs81 for seven day validity and in latest has launched 3G Wi-Fi dongle.
Airtel Bundling of 2G/3G data with handset/tablet purchases
in collaboration with handset vendors, is also offering free bundled 2G/3G data on handset purchases from its stores to postpaid and prepaid subscribers. Interestingly, these promotions are not just being offered both on premium phones, but also on mass-market phones like Nokia 112 and Nokia Asha 208 that retail at Rs2,700 and Rs4,000. Under Nokia Asha, Bharti is providing free Facebook access and data usage of up to 500MB/monthly for three months. At the higher end with Samsung S5 Bharti even for prepaid user offer 2GB 3G data per month for two months.
Airtel DSL Broadband Push
Airtel has also renewed its focus on pushing the high speed broadband (DSL) offering on fixed line. Not only does Bharti Airtel claim the best broadband network with coverage of 85 cities, consistent net speed delivery and prompt service support, it has an expanded range of offering starting at Rs799/monthly, with speeds of 2Mbps – 16Mbps and data offering of 15GB to 175GB.
Finally, we are seeing some aggressive action on the Broadband front in this country or lethargic Governance & Regulations 🙂