UK’s Vodafone may shortly unveil converged fast broadband solutions in India to fight Reliance Jio Infocomm by bundling wired home broadband packs with 3G/4G mobile services, leveraging the fixed broadband resources of YOU Broadband, a category-A internet service provider (ISP) it acquired nearly a year back.
“Vodafone’s converged broadband solutions business model, combining fixed-line and mobile services is popular in key international markets such as the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, and may soon be replicated in India by leveraging subsidiary YOU’s resources, amid surging data consumption levels,” a person with direct knowledge told ET. Vodafone India had reportedly acquired Mumbai-based YOU Broadband for Rs 400 crore from TRG Capital.
Vodafone’s emphasis on highspeed fixed broadband at 100 Mbps alongside mobile services comes at a time when rival Reliance Jio is reportedly running trials of its ultra-fast fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) services in key data markets like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Hyderabad ahead of a fullblown commercial launch likely later this year. According to reports, the 4G entrant is tipped to bundle television services with home broadband to tap into more than 100 million households, including those in tier II and II categories.
Last October, Ambani had said that optical fibre and fixed-line broadband would be the next big monetisation opportunity for Jio. “The addition of YOU Broadband positions us well to serve the growing demand for high-speed connectivity at home and perfectly complements Vodafone’s own nationwide data smart mobile network,” a Vodafone India spokesman said in a written response to ET’s queries. Combining YOU Broadband’s resources, he said, would enable Vodafone India to “offer customers cutting-edge internet speeds and consistent experience for enabling seamless HD video streaming and browsing across multiple devices simultaneously”.
A wholly-owned Vodafone India unit, YOU Broadband has over 3,000 km of optic fibre cable and 17,000 km of last-mile coaxial cables to homes across 18 key data consuming markets, including Mumbai, Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Nagpur, Pune and Coimbatore.
Vodafone India’s plans to ring in converged broadband solutions to hold on to data customers comes at a time when the telecom industry is in the throes of a fierce price war triggered by Jio’s disruptive entry in September 2016, which has also led to consolidation in the market. Vodafone India has posted doubledigit growth in the enterprise business annually for the past three years and sector experts expect the company to leverage YOU’s highspeed wired broadband network to enter homes, reach out to small and medium enterprises and startups.
Despite the wealth of data offers on mobile phones at lower tariffs following Jio’s entry, demand for data at higher speeds in places such as homes, small enterprises, education institutes and offices makes the wired broadband segment equally relevant, say experts.
