India’s developing broadband appetite, and a lesson in longevity

There was considerable excitement at the beginning of last week. The basis was seemingly definite chatter about Starlink’s almost-done license approvals to begin satellite internet services in India. For consumer homes and business establishments alike. That hasn’t happened, as yet (though it still may, any day). It’s something I’d suspected all along, the biggest giveaway being Starlink remaining tight-lipped on any plans to open up the service’s pre-orders. I’ll admit, being sceptical is a natural trait (it took Jurgen Klopp to share a dose of “doubters to believers”), and this seemingly done deal, no different. You’ve to look for the hints. If approvals were in transit, we’d have seen movement to rake in the money. Nevertheless, while we aren’t there yet, it is inevitable India’s satellite broadband era will begin at some point in the next few months. That’s the space I’ve tried to decode (alongside how satellite constellations envelope earth for coverage), with Reliance also expected to join the fray. Yet, a lot remains ambiguous.

Mind you, that upcoming transition into a new era specifically refers to having satellite broadband as an option for consumers, you and I, for our homes. India has already had satellite broadband services working since 2021, for enterprises and businesses. Bharti Airtel backed OneWeb as well as Hughes with its Jupiter platform, two examples. Interestingly, Starlink is going for the global mobile personal communication by satellite, or GMPCS, license. Think of this as a singular approval to offer data (i.e internet) as well as voice services through the same satellite. Mind you, holding a license doesn’t necessarily mandate companies to provide both services. Reliance and OneWeb hold the GMPCS license in India.

One thing is clear – satellite broadband for consumers, will be a pricey affair. At least for the foreseeable future. The cues come from Starlink’s global pricing parity. Every month, you’ll be parting with around $120 (roughly works out to ?9,975 per month). This is ten times the cost of most common 100Mbps wired and 5G broadband plans, in India. You must also factor in the cost to get going. That is, the hardware on your premises. Globally, pricing for the outdoor unit and the Starlink Wi-Fi Router (likely to be dual-band Wi-Fi 5 spec), is around $599 (that is, around ?49,800). Suddenly, don’t the existing wired and 5G broadband options from Airtel and Reliance Jio, come across as better value? It may so be, for most homes.

CONNECTED

Staying on the connectivity theme for a bit longer, we have some data on how India’s broadband experience is being delivered by internet service providers, or ISPs. The good folks over at internet analytics company Opensignal give us a broad snapshot of India’s wired broadband space, pan-India as well as the regional contours. Airtel Xstream is outpacing Reliance JioFiber in the download speed metric as well as with peak download speeds. That is, despite the latter having a larger chunk of the market, according to latest official figures (That data also indicates India’s wired broadband space is still growing, but very slowly). For me, the highlight was the positive play by regionally-strong ISPs. The likes of ACT Fibernet, Excitel, and GTPL to name a few (an opportunity for the likes of Tata Play Fiber to step up their game?) have more than made their mark in many regions, and proved more than capable of providing reliability and value, whilst competing with the scales that Airtel and Reliance Jio have.

As luck would have it with timing, internet service provider ACT Fibernet released their two-year State of the Internet report. Always interesting data points, which illustrate a trajectory. 24 cities covered, to map how India is using their internet connections. Two themes are clear – Indians are using more data than ever before, and want faster internet connections while at it. I’ll summarise it for you.

• Pan India, the average data usage per month has increased by 25%, with Hyderabad (35%) and Bengaluru (23%) leading that momentum. No surprise then that individual data use is collectively on the up. Data suggests individual usage peaked at 32TB data consumed in a period of two years (that’s more than 1.3TB data a month; a little surprising since ACT Broadband has a fair usage policy per plan, that’s usually around or less than 3,333GB per month).
• Now that data usage is on the up, one of the reasons is users are downloading more, by as much as 27% compared with the two years prior. Hyderabad (37%) downloads the most, but Bengaluru (25%) and Delhi (23%) are definite partners in this change in usage habits.
• Primetime is in force too. “As the workforce gradually returns to offices, the data consumption habits have shifted towards later evening , peaking from 8 PM to 11 PM.,” points out Dr. Sarath Kumar, CTO, Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. It’s not just Netflix binging, but also e-learning and video calls that are in vogue at this time of the day. Quite a wholesome evening for families, it would seem.

India’s wired broadband share needs to grow. Fast. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, for remote working and reliable internet connectivity (that’s speeds and connection uptime), wireless tech such as 5G routers for homes cannot replace the consistency of a wireline. The latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data for October 2023 clocks India’s wired broadband subscriber base at 37.35 million – a number that would include fiber, cable, and DSL technologies. It represents a sluggish monthly growth rate of 1.32% or 36.87 million wired broadband users clocked at the end of September.

Circling back to the importance of strong ISPs to as competition for Airtel and Reliance Jio, it is good to note ACT Broadband is more than matching the two pan-India players in terms of infrastructure, and subsequently pricing as well as speeds. They have a higher starting point in most cities (50Mbps compared with Airtel’s 40Mbps and JioFiber’s 30Mbps), but offer more speed options along the way at different price points – 100Mbps, 150Mbps, 250Mbps, 300Mbps (this tends to be a fixture in cities where 1Gbps isn’t enabled yet) and of course, 1Gbps (this, at Rs 1,999 is significantly less expensive than Rs 3,999 that Airtel and Jio demand).

ACT Broadband’s is the sort of template more ISPs need to follow. Tata Play Fiber is one. Excitel is another that comes to mind. There are many more. But more to the point, will they?

MILESTONE

Some of you may remember, I’ve often spoken quite passionately about an increasingly rare art of longevity. Be it while designing a phone (looking at you, foldables), making AI tools relevant, or tech purchases we make. More often than not, consumer tech brands (and therefore the products they make) don’t often integrate a thought about an unfolding expanse of time, as a building block. It is important, yet missed easily. That’s the reason why you’ll see very few milestones, that define where we are with our tech evolution. Lenovo (formerly IBM) ThinkPads. Apple iPhones. Sony’s Walkman (they’re still around). Amazon Kindle e-readers, perhaps? You probably were thinking this – Apple’s Mac devices.

That was the foundation of my interaction with Apple executives Colleen Novielli, Doug Brooks and Meghna Lav this past week, coinciding with Macs completing 40-years of constant evolution. And refinement. The latter, is why it has been around for this long. I point to quite a few, regularly. Most of us may have a familiar reference point from the 2000s, which is when the Mac’s modern era commenced. Take for example, the most popular ultra slim laptop of all time, MacBook Air in 2008. Or the cylindrical Mac Pro in 2013, which still remains the most radical computing device design. Buyers soon enough realise longevity is part of the game too.

I still have the first generation MacBook Pro Retina 13-inch (the late 2012 edition), and its pristine even today. The screen, touchpad, keyboard, how well the aluminum (and the finish) has held up. Battery life too – still around 7 hours (a decade and a bit more, later) when used as a work laptop, something Windows laptops have struggled to achieve and surpass, for most part of the 2010s. (Disclaimer: I’ve generally been known to handle tech with considerable care.)

For Apple, it was akin to completing the puzzle of experience when they made the total shift from Intel chips to their own. As Colleen Novielli said, “Apple Silicon has really helped us unlock all of the experiences for our users, that have never been possible before. We have huge gains in performance, of course, to the incredible battery life, to reimagining designs for the line-up. We really have this tour de force as we’d like to call it, of this integration and collaboration across chip design, hardware and software, industrial design, interaction design and our services”. That’s close to the perfect summary. And an equally perfect foundation to build with.

• “We’ve been on this incredible pace of innovation with the transition to Apple Silicon. We’ve never been moving faster and innovating more on the Mac, as we are today,” says Doug Brooks. That’s spot on. Apple Silicon is now in its third generation, recalibrating performance, thermal and battery stamina goalposts every time. Yet, there’s precious little coming from Intel and AMD in terms of a response.
• “The MacBook Air in 13 and 15-inch sizes deliver 18 hours of battery life. The MacBook Pro is unrivalled at 22 hours of battery life,” said Meghna Lav. You think it’d be easy for rival chipmakers to respond? Think about this – the latest generation M3 chip, is up to 35% faster than the M1, and up to 20% faster than the M2. Compromise battery life? No chance. The M3 can return similar performance results for many use-cases, using less than half the power of an M1.
• “It’s about designing the products, experiences and designing for the user. We have this combination of our silicon, software and our services. That’s enabled us to really challenge some of the typical trade-offs,” said Novelli. Wrap your head around this – Apple made the “Ultra” chips, a method they arrived upon by connecting two “Max” chips, with UltraFusion tech. M1 Ultra, and then M2 Ultra. The result? 134 billion transistors, 16 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores, 76 GPU cores, 32 Neural Engine cores, and configurable with up to 192 GB unified RAM.

Since the entire puzzle is now in its control, there’s reason for Apple (and indeed, consumers) to be confident about the 2024 Mac updates. And beyond. If you’re looking to buy a new iMac, MacBook or Mac Mini, for instance. Even if you aren’t software refinement will be the basis for more functionality with macOS, as developers get more tools to work with. Gaming is something Apple is intent on solving quickly. They have the horsepower to. And the subscription service too, Apple Arcade. It all seems to be falling into place.