Two days ago, Mukesh Ambani-led telecom operator Reliance Jio announced JioGigaFiber which is a fixed-line broadband service that will offer speeds of up to 1 Gbps to its customers. This has many of us excited. While there’s still some time for JioGigaFiber to roll-out, with registrations commencing from August 15, it looks like telecom operator Airtel has already started preparing itself for the disruption that JioGigaFiber will bring in by removing FUP limits from its broadband plans.
Airtel has removed the FUP limit from its broadband plans which means there’s no limit to how much data you can use at full speeds. For example, Airtel’s ₹699 broadband plan initially offered 40 GB of data per month at speeds of up to 40 Mbps. But now, you can use as much as data you want in a month at speeds of up to 40 Mbps. This is a certainly good news for Airtel Broadband customers, but only for those who live in Hyderabad.
Airtel has removed the FUP limits from its broadband plans only in Hyderabad. The broadband plans in other cities remain unchanged. Moreover, Airtel initially had a total of five plans in Hyderabad, which have now been reduced to four. These plans are priced at ₹349, ₹449, ₹699 and ₹1299. These plans only differ by the speeds they offer, because with the FUP limit removed, customers can now use unlimited data.
The ₹349 plans offers speeds of up to 8 Mbps, ₹449 up to 16 Mbps, ₹699 up to 40 Mbps, and, ₹1299 up to 100 Mbps. Back in April this year, Airtel had announced a new broadband plan priced at ₹2199 that offered 1200 GB data a month at speeds of up to 300 Mbps. But that plan is no longer available in Hyderabad.
With that being said, along with removing the FUP limit from its broadband plans in Hyderabad, Airtel has also stopped offering data roll-over facility in the city which actually makes sense because users can now use as much as data they want, so there won’t be any unused data left in a month that will need to be carried over to next month.
That said, what still remains the same is the unlimited local and STD voice call benefit. Moreover, Airtel is also offering a discount of 15% if you pay for 6 months at once, and a discount of 20% if you pay for 12 months.
Having said that, even though Airtel has removed the FUP limit from its broadband plans in Hyderabad, the Terms & Conditions section on Airtel’s website does reveal that there indeed is a limit to how much data customers can use. The T&C says that unlimited plans are available “only for non-commercial usage. Commercial usage is defined as usage above 3TB/month“. Yes, that does mean that you can use no more than 3 Terabytes (3000 GB) of data in a month. But hey, we don’t think even the most data-hungry customers use that much of data in a month. Do they?
Anyways though, now that Airtel has removed the FUP limit from its broadband plans in Hyderabad, it remains to be seen whether Airtel does the same in other cities or not.
