The Hindu Business Line : Pure play broadband cos taking on telecom giants

With a low-cost business model and rock-bottom tariffs, companies such as Aksh Broadband, Pacenet, Dishnet DSL, and Hathway are becoming household names and are taking on the might of large telecom players such as BSNL, Bharti and Reliance.

Aksh Broadband, for instance, has formed a strategy to tie up with State Governments to connect rural India with a 1 MB broadband connection for just Rs 100 a month.

The company has already entered into an agreement with the Andhra Pradesh Government to connect all the mandals and Government offices in the State.

The Rs 400-crore project envisages laying 1,00,000 km of optical fibre cable across the State. To compare, Bharti Tele-ventures has done only 40,000 km across the country yet.

"We want to reach out to rural India to provide broadband connectivity with triple play capabilities at affordable costs. After Andhra Pradesh, we will be looking at other parts of the country such as Haryana, Kerala, Assam, and Jharkhand. We have sent our proposal to the respective State Governments," Mr Y.L. Agarwal, Managing Director of Aksh Broadband, told Business Line.

The company has applied for an ISP licence and is also exploring opportunities in markets outside India.

Hathway Cable Internet, another pure broadband player offering broadband Internet services through television cable networks in major cities, is also planning to expand.

Broadband Pacenet (India) Ltd has launched services in Mumbai and is rolling out in Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Nashik, and Nagpur. Aksh has tied up with 30,000 cable TV operators in AP to offer broadband services.

The Chennai-based Dishnet Wireless is going big on wireless broadband services (WiFi). The company is planning to cover hotels, restaurants, cafes, airports, railway stations, shopping malls, convention centres, educational institutions, and public locations in big cities such as Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad. In the second phase, WiFi hotspots will be opened in cities such as Chandigarh, Kochi, Agra, and Thiruvananthapuram. To roll out services faster, companies using the cable technology are going the aerial route instead of digging the ground.

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Pure play broadband cos taking on telecom giants