Bharti Airtel to expand its home broadband services to over 1,000 cities: Report

Bharti Airtel is set to expand its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband services, in collaboration with local cable operators who will provide the last-mile connection, Business Standard reported.

The company’s target is to reach over 40 million of the 240 million households and cover over 1,000 cities in the country in the next year and a half, a source told the publication.

Airtel plans to coordinate with cable operators to provide the last leg of the fibre connectivity and in return, get a revenue share. The operators are also responsible for maintaining the fibre infrastructure. Other areas like revenue management, customer servicing, content and hardware will be taken care of by Airtel.

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Speaking to the publication, a source said, “Currently, broadband at home has an ARPU (average revenue per user) of Rs 700. Assuming that each household has three mobile connections of Airtel and also takes our DTH connection, Airtel would be able to garner an ARPU of Rs 1,700-1,800 from each home.”

While Airtel has been slow in the uptake of home broadband, it is planning to expand its reach. Over the last few years, it has entered over 120 cities and reached a subscriber base of 2.6 million.

Its current plan is to maintain this base and expand the collaborative FTTH operations everywhere else.

Clarifying how they’ll tackle competitors, another source said that though many cable operators are aligned with large multi-system operators like Jio, they work for everyone and are independent entities. They are not in an exclusive deal with Airtel but will get into similar arrangements with the competition as well.