Bharti Airtel has launched a 16 Mbps broadband service, boosting its existing broadband offerings in New Delhi, NCR, Chennai, Bangalore. This comes close to the heels of Tata Indicoms Power Launcher, which offered speeds of 100 Mbps over an Ethernet network to homes and offices in Mumbai; Practical speeds for Tata Indicom users is around 10 Mbps, which Airtel beats by a clear margin. Airtel was already offering 8 Mbps broadband through its 90, 205 km long fibre optic network. It has now doubled the download speed to 16 Mbps, and upload speeds have been boosted from 768 Kbps to 2 Mbps. This is suitable for data-heavy applications like video conferencing, gaming and video streaming. Pricing Two tariff plans are offered - Rs 2999 per month with a data transfer limit (not download) of 20 Gb; Rs 4999 for a 50 Gb limit and a landline thrown in. Airtel's 8 Mbps line came for Rs 1299 per month and a data transfer limit of 4 Gb. The new data transfer limits offer much more freedom - 20 Gb will suit basic surfers and the 50 Gb limit has been set for heavy users. We do not know the price for data downloads that exceed this limit. There is no unlimited plan. This absence of unlimited offers by broadband ISPs is a complete letdown, but then both Tata Indicom and Airtel have "Fair Usage" limits for their broadband services; as MediaNama had reported earlier, both companies also limits for their wireless broadband services. Technology Airtel reaches…
