Thread: Hayai Broadband Pricing

Originally Posted by rak007

^^ No matter how much prices comes down, we wont be having stack of 1/1.5/2 TB 3.5" HDDs at our home. If hayai will be provide such connections, then i suppose having a collection of our movies will be passe. I mean i myself have around 400 GB+ of collection in my external HDDs but with this connection if i intend to watch a movie, i will just stream or download it in seconds.

Moreover as you rightly pointed out "WHEN MOOD STRIKES". I mean if i intend to watch the Harry Potter series in HD just now, with current connection it will take me 2 nights to procure a 720p rip and by that time my whole enthu will be lost.

Ok Ok lets not discuss what we will download

I suppose even if you give me 100 Mbps connection i wont be able to use more than say 200 GB a month. We have a life outside computer too
BTW I will be back to Mumbai in dec, hope hayai arrives before i do so i dont have to wait

So, hypothetically speaking, how much do you think 150-200GB is going to cost/month? (even though the connection would be unlimited in a sense)

Originally Posted by pa1pa1

ok ok, i was kinda playing the devils advocate. Cant wait for hayai to launch! Any rough estimations as of now?

Originally Posted by blr_p

Q4 2009, that means Jan next yr.

You read my mind. I would like to suggest January 1st at 00:00: Big launch party, Shivaji Park, Mumbai. I think the pilot should start in late October/early November.

Hi,
I have some suggestions on the pricing part:
I like the pay for what you use part..but let's make this better!

Today,
Some of the people (rich idiots, basically) pay upto Re 1/MB as over-usage charge. Which is extremely stupid.

What I see now is: People pay upto 250 bucks per GB and get speeds like 256 KBPS, which is poor. Since Hayai will be offering 2 MBPS plans their best deal would be to offer PER MB download and not PER GB. My estimate so that they can provide quality services with a profit:

Tier 1:
15p/1 MB - upto 1 GB = Rs 150 for 1 GB usage.

Tier 2:
12p/1 MB - from 1 GB ~ 3 GB = Rs 120 ~ 360 for 1 - 3 GB usage.

Tier 3:
10p/1 MB - from 3 GB to 100 GB = Rs 300 ~ 10,000 for 3 GB ~ 100 GB

These are just example plans..the real pay for what you use would be to charge PER MB. They can also add a Rs 99/month charge under 3 GB usage since this plan doesn't look much profitable for Hayai. Example: If people use 400 MB, they have to pay Rs 60 aprox which is Rs 67 bucks with tax. Adding the Rs 99 fee would make it at least Rs 166/mo for 400 mb of usage. MTNL charges Rs 200/mo for this plan. (and make the basic plan at Rs 170 for 400 free download...sounds crazy?)..and you guys need not worry about profits..just offer 10 MBPS speeds in this plan which would make the users use the basic limit (400 MB) finish faster!

I would recommend Hayai broadband to target economical users rather than rich people..considering it is being launched in India ;)

What do you guys think about this?

I think this kind of thing would work with Mobile/Wireless, a-la Tata's per second billing with the new DOCOMO service, however for Fiber, it's simply not feasible due to the high cost of laying fiber in Mumbai (in particular) - in order for that to work, the user would have to consume something like 8-10GB before we broke even (due to the cable costs, set top box etc)

With a wireless service costing significantly less to deploy, then we can break even when a person uses 1-2GB in a month, which seems reasonable even for a light user.

It's an option, for the economical users, I guess, but one thing I've also said is that the people who can't/don't want to pay more than Rs800/month for internet can use BSNL or Reliance or whoever else: I'm not particularly interested in this market (excepting my plans for Rural Broadband, but the model there is entirely different) and my opinion is that it is very crowded market segment already, and that the quality of service may suffer if we try to compete at that level.

I realize that this sounds like a bit of a "stuff you" to the users at the lower-end of the spectrum, but even in developed countries where the wholesale bandwidth is cheaper you won't get under Rs900 a month for even the most basic broadband. The segment of users we're talking about probably could care less about the joys of really high-speed and probably don't download too much anyway: I can see why it might be lucrative for some providers to go after that market, but perhaps not for us.

We can't really fairly be compared to MTNL either, because they're using old copper, which was likely installed well before the prices skyrocketed to what they are today. My grandmother-in-law purchased their house in Mahim for Rs 60,000 (or 16,000 - I don't recall which) in 1961 - to buy that house now would be near Rs 1Cr based on average values in the area. By comparison, we're trying to install cable at 2009 pricing, not 1961, 1991 or even 2001 pricing.

I've been discussing this on GTalk with coder92, and suggested he open this idea up for debate, so, as usual - thoughts and ideas?

Wimax spectrum auction will happen in next 90 days, that is if the government doesn't screw up once again. Looks like wimax (if done properly) can be used to target customers who use very little bandwidth every month such as 1GB or 2GB at the most.

The thing is that Tata/Reliance/Airtel/MTNL monopoly must be hit at all levels to make broadband affordable for even the lower middle class people in our country. They must lose customers of all kinds including customers with low ARPU such as Rs. 300 per month or even lower than that.

Originally Posted by vishalrao

this would again open the doors for massive shock bills due to billing errors/abuse or even users whos PCs are infected with viruses or forget to shut their downloads/uploads. we need a guaranteed fixed monthly price no matter what. whether its a Fair Usage Policy or true Unlimited plan but there should be no room for billing errors/disputes to arise.

I think you missed about half of that whole idea: for the first month, there is leniency. We will call up the customer if 2 months in a row they download more than perhaps 150% of their "allocation", and suggest that they upgrade the plan otherwise, fix the amount that they download (uTorrent 2.0 beta has such features that you can limit your daily/weekly/monthly downloads).

Only on the 3rd month would we take action, so the only people that would be really affected would be those that download like 1000% of their allocation: those that pay for 10GB and try to get away with downloading 100GB. This is just unfair to everyone else on the network, and I'm not necessarily opposed to vigilante justice ;)

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Originally Posted by Topweb

Wimax spectrum auction will happen in next 90 days, that is if the government doesn't screw up once again. Looks like wimax (if done properly) can be used to target customers who use very little bandwidth every month such as 1GB or 2GB at the most.

We cross our fingers that it will, but the spectrum is prohibitively expensive unless we are able to come up with Rs 1,500Cr (pan-India license).

That said, I'm not entirely enthused about WiMax on the whole anyway, so we will probably end up using it as a mobile service and/or for backup, unless we can find something else that works sufficiently well on the move. I'll see if I can get in touch with some friends in the Telecoms industry in Japan and see how they're progressing and what they're using (time to brush up on my Japanese... it's been a while...)

Originally Posted by Topweb

The thing is that Tata/Reliance/Airtel/MTNL monopoly must be hit at all levels to make broadband affordable for even the lower middle class people in our country. They must lose customers of all kinds including customers with low ARPU such as Rs. 300 per month or even lower than that.

Actually, mostly the prices of wholesale bandwidth need to be reduced, so thats VSNL (Tata), FLAG (Reliance) and Bharti. Additionally, this stupid Rs50/GB cost of peering at NIXI needs to be eliminated - such costs don't exist in any other internet exchange in any other country.

Originally Posted by admin

frankly speaking the kind of 'promises' you are making here are hard to believe for any of us.

If he is able to deliver even 10% of what he is promising, it will still be a huge change for the better.

Originally Posted by admin

frankly speaking the kind of 'promises' you are making here are hard to believe for any of us.

Which is fair enough, but I wouldn't bring them up if I couldn't make them work on paper (that is, my magical spreadsheet) - and this is why I've not released any solid pricing yet: I'm rather worried that I've forgotten about something quite major, even though I've taken in to account everything from office space and stationary to staffing, marketing, bandwidth, servers, cabling, digging up roads, licensing, ip addresses, customer equipment, backup power, peering at NIXI and even bribes ...err... incentives to officials. And the 8% TRAI/DOT tax on revenue - on top of what they already take as licensing fees.

Originally Posted by Topweb

If he is able to deliver even 10% of what he is promising, it will still be a huge change for the better.

The speed will definitely be there - no question. The limitations (data allowances, pricing, possibility of true unlimited etc) remain in my brain/computer at this moment... if you ever see me on the street, good luck catching my attention - I'm in a trance when I don't have all those boxes in front of me!