# Hathway Broadband plans expansion to take on ACT Fibernet, Has it improved from earlier?



## swatkats (Jun 16, 2015)

Hathway has announced investing around Rs 280 crore towards broadband network infrastructure with a focus on six metro cities this fiscal, aimed at improving its revenues from broadband to nearly 50% from the current 20%. 

The company recently launched its high-speed internet offering Docsis 3.0 in Hyderabad, the fourth in the list and will soon add Delhi. 

"Currently, 20% of our revenues come from broadband services and we would like to make it 50-50 for cable and broadband. We would like to triple our user base in Hyderabad from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh by end of FY 2015-16," said Rajan Gupta, president of broadband business at Hathway Cable and Datacom Ltd.

Docsis 3.0 has been launched at an introductory price of Rs 699 for a 50 Mbps connection.ACT Fibernet is the lead broadband provider in the city covering 4.5 lakh households and had launched its 100 Mbps offering at a cost of Rs 2799 earlier this year. 

The investment per user is Rs 11,000 for the Docsis setup, says Gupta. "The advantage is we can do it at a mass scale cost-effective manner. In order to cover a city the size of Hyderabad, we would have to set up 15-20 machines at an investment of Rs 2 crore," he adds. Cost of recovery depends on the number of paying customers in the area. 

"Considering we get up to 25% customers from that area, it takes two to two and half years to recover the cost," says Jagdish Kumar,managing director and CEO of Hathway. It currently serves 20 cities in the broadband business which contributes to 20% of total revenues, the remainder coming from the cable TV business. 

The fixed nature of broadband ensures loyalty among customers subscribing to the service provider. "This year we are planning to spend about Rs 500 crore of which Rs 280 crore will be spent towards broadband, as compared to Rs 180 crore last year," says Jagdish Kumar. He added that the high-speed Docsis offering will be scaled up to other cities in a period of three years.

Source: *economictimes.indiatimes.com...enues-from-broadband/articleshow/47693596.cms
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- These Buggers called me daily to sell their broadband until i reported them as Unsolicited calls to TRAI from 3 numbers. 
- I have heard from few people that they're doing installations in less than 48 hours but how is their service?
- Any Docsis 3.0 Customer can shed some light on speeds and the modem they have?


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