India’s Getting It’s First 1 Gbps Broadband Service!
Internet at 400 times the nation’s average broadband speeds!
“India” is everywhere, especially with the ‘push India forward’ intent of the current government.
Say what you may about the political landscape these days, but you’d still agree — never has India seen an emphasis on Make In India, or “do for India” as of the last 3 years. MNCs, Indian brands, Indian bureaucracy, Indian infrastructure establishments — every one of them is engaged in some way, to push India over the crest.
One of the biggest movements is the goal to digitise India. Indian Telcos — large and small, are all bending their backs to connect India and empower Indians; as are global behemoths like Facebook and Google.
ACT Fibernet (Atria Convergence Technologies) is one of our homegrown providers that is working to connect India too. And, it’s just taken a giant leap forward!
ACT just announced their plans to launch wired broadband internet services with speeds of 1 Gbps throughout Hyderabad. It is for the first time in India that an entire city would be “giga enabled”.
Once implemented, Hyderabad’s populace would enjoy 400 times the national average speed (2.5 Mbps)! With that, Hyderabad would be able to include its name in the vaunted list of world cities that have 1 Gbps (or faster connections) available to all it’s citizens.
That’s not all, ACT says that it plans to similarly enable ten other major cities as well, in due course.
Wondering what 1 Gbps could actually do?
How’s this — It will allow you to download from the internet faster than you’d be able to transfer data from a USB drive to your computer!
It’s fair to say that Infotainment is about to hit an all together new level as you’d be able to upload and download huge files in a matter of seconds, simultaneously. This means that finally, your huge files and device backups could now be uploaded to the Cloud in just a few seconds, all the while downloading HD movies from Netflix at the same time.
Data limits and tension about speed would be a matter of the past.
Bala Malladi, CEO of ACT Fibernet says that a 1TB Fair Usage Policy (throttling of the maniacal speed, down to something significantly lesser), would apply. He also cautions that while 1 TB might appear huge (considering that most connections today are capped at upto about 30 GB, the max being 200 GB), but it won’t take much time if you have a bunch of teenagers ready to swallow it up!
But there’s definitely a lot to be had, nonetheless. As Malladi further underlines, the usefulness of the plan will help organisations and startups who will, “have a cost-effective high-speed internet access will change the face of digital India”.
Read in isolation, this may be interpreted such that a lone user won’t get much benefit out of the plan, but that’s not really the case.
Also, one would require an appropriate Wi-FI router which can deliver the gigabyte speeds.
But then, that’s a small ingredient to get onto the superhighway.
With this announcement ACT has also placed itself ahead of Reliance, who claim to provide 1 Gbps connections too — but only in one locality of Mumbai.
You might be surprised to know that there are providers who provide even faster speeds than ACT’s proffer, in India! MTNL and Hayai both provide 10 Gbps plans — but only in a few places in Mumbai.
In it’s city wide implementation approach, ACT has dealt a body blow to almost every Telco in India.
Malladi found Hyderabad to be apt for the “maiden launch” as,”it has one of the best technological brands, educational institutions and vibrant economy”.
This plan is a colossal step forward to achieve the target “to connect all the 23 million citizens of Telangna by 2018”, Malladi said.
Wallowing over the fact that your city was not chosen for the plan? Fret not, it’ll happen soon — whether ACT lands there first, or another Telco does — fact is ACT has acted, and set the cat amongst the pigeons!
Originally published at Chip-Monks.
