Announcing the launch of the service, Mr. K Srinivas, Joint President, Telemedia Services, Bharti Airtel said,

“Airtel has constantly strived to innovate and deliver high quality products to its broadband customers. We are the leading private broadband service provider in the country and pioneered 8 Mbps broadband. It gives us great pleasure now to be able to introduce the fastest, wired broadband service on DSL. We will be able to offer 16 Mbps broadband to 70% of the households in the 3 cities of Delhi NCR, Chennai and Bangalore.”

Airtel delivers its broadband service to customers through a fiber backbone of Carrier Ethernet Network with last mile delivery on copper using ADSL2+ technology. This technology enables ultra high-speed broadband which is scalable and affordable. Airtel is the leading private broadband service provider in the country offering its services across 95 cities in the country with approximately 9.92 lakh broadband customers as on December 31, 2008.

Customers can gain access to 16 Mbps broadband by choosing from 2 Tariff Plans –

• Speed Combo 2999 – receive 16 Mbps broadband speed with monthly data transfer limit of 20 GB alongwith a fixed line connection at Rs. 2999 per month.
• Speed Combo 4999 – receive 16 Mbps broadband speed with monthly data transfer limit of 50 GB alongwith a fixed line connection at Rs. 4999 per month.

The question is who’ll buy this superfast connection considering the fact that it comes with a data transfer limit ? I can download 50 GB per month on my 2 Mbps connection using BSNL’s DataOne Home-500 Plan. Why pay Rs.5000 when you can get the same stuff for Rs.500 ? May be in coming years, the 16 Mbps thing becomes affordable to home users. Then, we’ll require a new HDD every now and then considering the high volume of p2p downloads

Turbo 16 Plan
Press Release

• I live in remote area where there is no proper network coverage from other providers.
• Don’t want to change my number. I am still one of those waiting for Mobile Number Portability to come to India.

What are Blackout Days ?
The following festival days have been specified as “Black Out” days when all P2P SMS will be charged at base price. That means, if you have any free message offers, tricks, free message packs etc, it wouldn’t work on these days and you’ll be charged the base price as per your plan. This applicable to Voice SMS too.

Probable List of Blackout Days
New Year – Jan 1
Sankranti – Jan 14
Valentine’s Day – Feb 14
Holi – March 11
Friendship Day – Aug 2
Ganesh Chaturthi – Aug 23
Eid – Sep 20
Dusshera – Sept 28
Diwali – Oct 17
Dasara – Oct 21
Christmas – Dec 25
New Year Eve – Dec 31
Please Note :
The above list is tentative. Airtel keeps on changing it. To know the Black Out days for current month, type
3 DAYS
and send it to 222.

P.S: They do not inform the customers by any means about the blackout days. Pass this message to everyone. I myself didn’t knew about this and lost around Rs 40 on Valentine’s Day. Fuck Airtel