Home broadband has now become essential part

Excitel has been obsessed to transform the way young Indians experience entertainment over the Internet at home. It has connected to over 3,00,000 homes and is growing fast, very fast!

Here, Vivek Raina, co-founder and CEO, Excitel, talks about the bandwidth pressure due to Covid-19, and the way ahead.

V&D: How is Excitel doing now, wrt WFH? How is the bandwidth pressure?

Vivek Raina: During Covid-19 lockdown, we have witnessed how home broadband has become an absolutely essential part of people's lives, it is perhaps the most important connection to the rest of the world under these circumstances.

Whether it is work from home, communication with near and dear ones, or leisure, broadband connectivity forms the bedrock of our lives in these times. Not just for Excitel, we are sure that the other players are also recording a surge in data consumption as people are using data-extensive video conferencing apps for official meetings. As people are at home, the use of streaming apps has also increased considerably.

At Excitel, we have seen a 30% increase in demand for new connections and 60% increase in per day data consumption  since March 1st week till now.

V&D: How is Excitel reaching out to rural areas? (A leading cricket umpire had to climb a tree to get a signal and Internet access).

Vivek Raina: Excitel is unique in its ability to penetrate deep into the unstructured India, providing affordable ultra-high speed Internet services at areas where there are hardly any streets. The Excitel business model is a unique, decentralized model, where Excitel creates an ecosystem of tens of thousands of eager, small partners, who maintain the Internet last mile in a relatively small area of a few square kilometers.

These are small entrepreneurs who are highly competitive and very serious about their business. Their job is to invest in the last mile network, connect users and fix issues. With affordable packages at the base price of INR 500, a family of six today can have gigabit access to the Internet which is 50 times more than any mobile service.

Excitel is also aiding job creation providing long-term sustainability and opening jobs in urban and semi-urban areas.

V&D: How are you managing your data plans now? Any increase in demand?

Vivek Raina: Amid the Covid-19 lockdown, the Internet has been listed as an essential item. With #StayHome and #WorkFromHome the new norm, people are dependent on the Internet for their day to day life. We, at Excitel, has always believe in providing unlimited data without any FUP (fair usage policy). So, the user doesn't have to worry about data consumption.We have also introduced more pocket-friendly plans with unlimited data.

With the lockdown being continued, we extended our data plans till the end of April. We also made one month free trials for all the new connections in the Delhi/NCR region. Yes, there has been a 30% increase in new connections as well as a 60% increase in data consumption.

We, at Excitel, are a bunch of tech-savvy guys. Our network is over-engineered to deliver massive amounts of data. We are currently delivering 600 Gigabits of data over a massive fiber network of 20,000 km including our partners’ networks to close to 3 lakh households. In Delhi NCR, we will be the biggest non-telco with such an expanse of a network across the city. Our network can accommodate twice the load as it is. So we are ready for the increased demand.

V&D: How is the FTTH infrastructure coping with demand?

Vivek Raina: About a year back, we took the decision of fully converting ourself into a 100% FTH company. In the last 7 months, we have transformed around 35 to 40 thousand users in Delhi/NCR onto Fibre To Home (FTH). By the end of the year, our entire base of over 300K subscribers and all  partners will be transitioned into fibre network.

All the new cities where we are starting, for eg., Lucknow, Jaipur, Bengaluru, Coimbatore,Vijaywada, etc., are only and exclusively on FTH. Hence, going forward, we want to be a 100% FTH company and for which the work has already started.

V&D: Why hasn't Excitel considered reducing Internet access prices? Why are old rates still showing on-site?

Vivek Raina: Excitel today has the most lucrative and the most value for money plans for all #StayHome and #WorkFromHome workforce of the country to support their connectivity requirements.

Excitel has always believed in providing high-speed, unlimited and affordable internet services for common masses of India.While all the other Internet brands still carry FUP, i.e., restriction in Internet speed after a certain amount of data usage, all Excitel packages are truly unlimited with constant speed and unlimited usage all through the month.

This becomes all the more important in these times of highly increased usage due to lockdown, our customers can do their work from home and use streaming services without worrying about data limits.

Our package prices have always been designed in such a way that our high speed services should be affordable to all, specifically for the lockdown times. We have introduced a special 1+1 package, which enables people to try world-class FTTH services at extremely affordable prices for the first two months of onboarding.

V&D: What are your views on net neutrality?

Vivek Raina: We believe the Internet providers should treat all traffic equally, without any restriction or throttling of specific content.

Vivek Raina, co-founder and CEO, Excitel