Broadband in India, still a dream?

Being a subscriber of Sify Broadband since almost a year now, I am still confused when we will see real broadband in India for common users. I have criticized Sify for their atrocious packages for ages now. Other companies seem to have better packages on offer in some factors.

Saw this new offer from Hathway, which promises 512kbps connectivity. Now that is what I would consider broadband is some sense. The prices look yummy as well… they are charging just INR250 a month. This is for a year’s commitment.

The problem is the data transfer limit. As per reports, they only allow 2400 MB per annum for data transfer. This is pretty sad considering broadband is useful for watching streaming videos, hearing music live online and other data transfer intensive purposes. As a result 250 rupee a month is pretty superficial.

If we do some math and check how much they are charging for each megabyte of data transfer, we come to around 80 paisa. If we see that in form of matter downloaded, an MP3 song weighing at around 5 megs would cost 4 rupee just for downloading.

However, if we compare this to Sify Broadband packages where a meg data transfer cost around 2.5 rupee, Hathway is a very good deal. The speed is double (512kbps compared to 256kbps for Sify Broadband) and costing is less than half.

This is left for us consumer to suffer with until the big players like BSNL and Reliance expand their network all over India. For most of us, broadband with no limits remain a dream.