Netflix drives new high speed ISP in city

The latest entrant in the heavily-contested ISP market is Hathway Cable and Datacom Ltd, that kicked off operations in the city three months ago, following a soft launch. The ISP’s aim is to disrupt the market with a super-aggressive pricing model and leveraging their fibre technology.

With the official launch of Hathway slated for Friday, Rajan Gupta, the MD tells us, “We were present in more than 10 cities across the country, comprising metros and mini metros. With our entry in Chennai, we are launching for the very first time in India, an end-to-end fibre solution for the home internet user. The Docsis 3 technology that we use is the same one used in the US for high speed internet. To start with, we are offering a speed of 150 mbps and a 1,000 GB (1 terabyte) down load limit on the GPON FTTH (Gigabit Passive Optical Networks) technology for Rs 999.” 

TRAI data suggests that broadband connections in India grew by 149.75 mn in March 2016 from 99.20 million in March 2015. Tamil Nadu ranked the highest in number of broadband customers in the country leading with over 12.02 million connections. The Indian broadband subscriber base, both wireless and wireline users has crossed the 100-million mark. Experts say the explosion in demand for data is attributed significantly to the trend of binge-watching popular shows and films. For instance, the hourly data consumption on a large smart TV is 1-2 GB. And it is not uncommon for households to exhaust as much as 40 GB only on weekends. 

Elaborating on the city’s status as one of top consumers of internet data, Gupta says, “Chennai is one of the fastest growing markets for the internet and consumption of online content. The average monthly consumption of data on wireline per consumer nationally is 45 GB. Chennai’s consumption is double that – at 90 GB. We are setting up a data centre here in the city, that we plan on making a hub for South India. We will be targeting about 5 lakh consumers from the city over the next three years. An investment of Rs 400-500 crore has been earmarked for this purpose over the said period.” 

The company spokesperson also detailed out the fixed line ISPs plans for setting up infrastructure in the city saying, “As many as four lakh homes in the arterial regions of the city have been covered by our network with respect to underground and aerial cabling. In areas where digging was not possible, we have tied up with Railtel and the Metro Rail to support our network. We foresee that 30-40 per cent of our national revenues will come from the Chennai region over the next few years.” 

He adds, “Our datacentre technology and backbone pipeline allow us to offer uninterrupted high speed connectivity. With video and data consumption on a steep rise, we are ready to handle the internet rush.” The company has partnered with Cisco for its datacentre requirements while Oracle handles its billing and provision demands. The company’s hardware partners include ZTE and Nokia.