India ranked 134th in the global ranking for fixed broadband, and poor fixed line infrastructure has been a key reason for this low ranking. Out of the 450 million broadband subscribers, only 18 million are fixed line broadband users.
The five leading wired broadband service providers are: BSNL (9 million) which is state owned, Bharti Airtel (2 million), Atria Convergence Technologies also known as ACT (1.4 million), MTNL (0.83 million), also state-owned and serving major cities, and Hathway Cable & Datacom (0.75 million).
Mumbai Headquartered Reliance Industries‘ JioGigaFiber is poised to change the landscape of the fixed line broadband in India. This fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service is more efficient and will offer higher network speeds. Registrations for the service are on across India, and the company is currently running beta trials of JioGigaFiber in several thousand homes. Those who sign up will not have to pay anything to get free 100GB data for 3 months. The 90-day offer comes with an internet speed of up to 100Mbps.
Mukesh Ambani, chairman, Reliance Industries Limited, said that over $36 billion has been spent so far in creating digital infrastructure to provide mobile broadband connectivity. “While India has made strides in mobile broadband and is globally competitive, it still lags significantly in fixed-line broadband. JioGigafiber will be the largest greenfield fixed-line broadband rollout anywhere in the world, with rollout happening in 1,100 cities of India simultaneously,” he added.
