Bharti Airtel is planning a massive expansion in its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband service offering, according to a number of Indian press reports.
The same reports suggest that Airtel is planning to compete more effectively in this space with Reliance Jio, which already offers an FTTH broadband service in 2,000 cities.
Airtel, which will roll out the FTTH broadband service via local cable operators, plans to offer the service in over 1,000 cities across the country in the next 12-18 months. Airtel is apparently targeting over 40 million of the 240 million households in the country, a reminder of the relatively low level of penetration of fibre in India.
However, Airtel spokespeople have pointed out that partnering local operators which have already installed cable or fibre inside the home of a customer will speed up the process and generate local entrepreneurship. Airtel is, apparently, live in 14 cities through this partnership model.
It is of course only a few weeks since Indian telecom infrastructure firm HFCL said it was deploying a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network for Reliance Jio across 300 cities in India and was supplying the entire range of fibre optic cable to the operator.
