Broadband Plans

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is broadband service?

  Broadband refers to high speed Internet connections. These can be wired or wireless — 4G speeds are high enough to count as broadband. According to the government, the minimum speed for broadband is a mere 512Kbps for now.

• What is the difference between broadband and Wi-Fi?

  Broadband simply refers to the connection that the Internet service provider is sending to your house. The ISP sends a wire into your house which goes into a modem, to enable the connection. The router that the ISP provides to use this connection is usually a Wi-Fi enabled one, which you can then use to connect phones, tablets, and laptops among other things, to the Internet.

• How do I choose a broadband service for home?

  The service you need will depend on a number of factors but look at the number of devices you need to connect, the kind of usage you have in mind, and how many people are in the house, in order to plan this. If you think your usage will mostly be to connect a laptop to the Internet to send emails and do some online shopping, then you probably don't need as much bandwidth or the same download limits as someone who lives in a family of four, all of whom are connected to the Internet and are watching movies and playing video games online through the day.

• Which broadband connections are truly unlimited?

  Many broadband connections in India are now unlimited. While a number of them still have a FUP (fair usage policy) which limits your high speed usage quota, others have switched to fully unlimited plans as well. Airtel and JioFiber both have fully unlimited plans you can choose.

• What is a Fair Usage Police (FUP)?

  To prevent some users from jamming up the network experience for all the subscribers in their area by using an inordinate amount of the network's resources (for example by torrenting huge files), ISPs introduced FUP, usage caps based on the amount of data that a person has used. In theory this makes sense, but the policies largely became extremely limiting as the usage of the Internet became more of a norm, and that is why Broadband providers are now moving away from this concept.