Bharti Airtel mulling large-scale expansion in FTTH broadband services: Report

In order to provide last-mile fibre connectivity to homes, telecom giant Bharti Airtel is mulling a large-scale expansion in its fibre-to-the-home broadband service in co-ordination with local cable operators.

The step is aimed at taking on Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio, which offers its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband service in over 2,000 cities, Business Standard reported.

The Sunil Mittal-led telecom operator is planning to offer the service in more than 1,000 cities nationwide, in the next 1-1.5 years.

As per the news report, Airtel’s target is to capture over 40 million of the 240 million households in the country.

The partnership with cable operators will help them get a revenue share as they will also be maintaining fibre infrastructure. The rest things i.e. consumer servicing, hardware, content, revenue management will be overseen by Airtel.

“It (partnership) is working well for home broadband subscribers as it is again saving resources,” Randeep Sekhon, Airtel CTO recently told ETTelecom adding the cable operator has already put a fibre cable inside the home of his customer which is now probably taking a cable TV which has backhaul on fibre.

The senior official said that the partnership model is helping the company expand its fibre network and launch services quickly.