We are the new entrant to ISP Business - What can make us the best? Boltfi.com

[BoltFi]

Hello BBF,

I am glad to join this forum, I have been following this forum since long time but registered today - I ate up my lazyness today. 🙂

I was pretty much surprised to find balajik in here. I know him from one of the site that I don't want to mention 🙂

We are running a pretty successful seedbox business named Ultraseedbox, and we want to try our hands on other business aspects of network, servers and other things. So, we all came up with the plan to offer one of the cheapest Internet services in the location available - we are adding quiet a capacity on our ring from the transits like TATA and Vodafone and we are adding 50GE port from exchange Extreme-IX. We want to provide FTTH on XG-PON network and we will have great deal of redundancy with the access of 4 POP's in each location we will be providing Internet services with.

You guys can bring us to your location as well - We are laying fibers in Noida Extension and Some parts of Noida Sectors like 70-80 and 100-125. We might lay fibers in few location of Greater noida - Worth the mention that we are still in the planning phase.

We will only be providing single plan - 1Gbps Unmetered bandwidth for Rs. 899 when paying for long term otherwise Rs.999 when paying monthly. There will be no installation fees but there will be security deposit of Rs.2500 for a Huawei device that will support wifi as well as FTTH.

 

[Sushubh]

i suppose the most popular feature that people benefit from is peering with popular content services like netflix, Amazon prime video, Hotstar, youtube and frequently accessed services on google, Apple etc. not many isps are doing torrent mirroring for legal purposes but that also helps a lot of people.

 

[BoltFi]

Thank you @Sushubh for your input. This is the only reason we are adding exchanges like Extreme-IX and Mumbai-IX. Extreme-IX peering CDN's list are here: Content Providers - Extreme IX - We have Limelight for Sony PS, Fastly for Reddit, Microsoft for Xbox and Azure, Amazon for AWS and Prime, Netflix, Facebook for social media like whatsapp and all and others. I think we are mostly covered. For torrenting we are planning on adding them: Extreme Peering | The ultimate Internet acceleration!

Lastly, should be fear JioFiber as I am reading - their launch is around the corner and how are the prices sounds for our service?

 

[Sushubh]

tbh. jiofiber is unlikely to be cheap. not as cheap as you are aiming to be. sure their mobile data plans are quite cheap. but offering 1gbps unlimited data on fiber for under 1000 bucks? not going to happen. my only worry about jio is that they would end up acquiring smaller players who are offering cheaper services around the country. it is unlikely that they would kill them through cheaper pricing.

 

[BoltFi]

I am not sure how attractive is 1Gbps figure to the customers, but I think that Jio is going to launch 100Mbps 1TB data for 500 Bucks and we are thinking of offering something same. We cannot match this pricing honesty, we can offer 100Mbps Unlimited for 550 bucks if we continue to grow the capacity with our transits.

We are running the survey in noida location, and there seems to be the good demand of it. We already have received 500 orders in a week, still counting. 🙂

 

[Sushubh]

that's the thing. do not compromise just to compete with jio. focus on quality of service and customer support. it's pointless to target the market which would try to save 100-200 bucks to get slower speeds with limited data. they are never going to appreciate the good things you might be trying to offer over jio. we all know what happened to the mobile market with jio. quality of services become irrelevant as all operators tried to compete with jio on pricing. dropped call or lack of signal has become a norm.

 

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[Aakash Malhotra]

1st of all good luck for your business endeavour.

just a few pointers from my side -

dont buy bandwidth from tata. they s u c k balls. get it from airtel . airtel has the best routing to international servers.

you will find a ton of users here who are on local isp that get bandwidth from airtel and tata and the end consumer always prefers to be on airtel routing because of better pings and speeds to international servers.

i use excitel in delhi apart from high speed and no fup it S u c ks.

here is what you can do to make sure you dont fall amongst the likes of excitel

1) keep your network open. i do not have much knowledge about this so cant comment but excitel is very restrictive. they dont give the option to user to open ports. resulting in poor video gaming experience. poor seeding on torrents. poor speeds on 0 day torrents even when there are like 100+ seeders. excitel just fails to connect to other party.
you should give consumer an option to get static ip if need be.

2) get bandwidth from airtel - as said above for better pings and speeds to international servers. excitel has okay local speeds but when it comes to international servers it is horse s h i t. i have so called 75 Mbps plan but i get video bufferings most of the time when i am watching something that is not on youtube.

3) make sure your network is packet loss free. excitel is riddled with packet loss. their technicians are incapable of fixing it. they dont even ackowledge the issue despite 100 of complaints about the same on their fb page. deploy technicians who knows what packet loss is, how to rectify it and how to fix it. these days bandwidth is cheap . so local isps like excitel they just focus on giving speeds for low price. for an avg joe who browse only youtube and google , it gets the job done for them .

4) you are offering 1Gbps. make sure that you are actually delivering it. speed should be upward 850+ Mbps to your isp node. spectra offers 1Gbps but their speeds cannot be termed as gigabit speeds. they are more like 500 - 600 Mbps speeds.

excitel has added a ton of users these past few years . their main focus is just to grow and earn money . they dont give a sh it about their network. network quality is pathetic.


i can only think of these points as these issues are what i am facing with excitel . maybe others can pitch in their ideas.
a good customer support is also an essential. people deployed who actually knows how to do S H I T and not restart router replug cable bull sh i t .
you can focus this on later stages when you become successful .


also your website is not registered or something. nothing comes up when i open it.

 

[a.c]

My two cents.
The only advantage which jioFiber would have is IPv6 (that is if they use it). Other than that it won't be cheap for sure.
As aakash said above, even I would like an ISP which would keep the ports open. But then I am assuming it would be tough considering the problem of limited IPv4 addresses.
If possible try to get consistent speeds with international servers also (don't know if its possible but would be great).

Congrats on your new endeavor.

 

[BoltFi]

Thank you @Aakash Malhotra and @achaudhary997 for your valuable feedback! I will keep everything in mind, It seems like offering 1Gbps is very tough job without limits. I think that there should be some kind of limits so that just one user cannot saturate the whole link and take the network down with him. I know it will happen alot and thinking that I should have the FUP of 500GB-1000GB atleast. What do you guys think about the FUP's? We are still going through alot of planning and we keep changing minds about things, sorry. 🙁

 

[a.c]

@BoltFi
Don't get me wrong but personally I don't like FUPs. Even if someone says they are offering 1-2TB of FUP @ 1 Gbps, I would rather go for some other 100mbps unlimited plan. But this is just my view on FUPs.
But since you said that you are aiming for a sub 1000 Rs Gigabit plans, I won't mind FUPs at all. 🙂 If possible keep a unlimited plan also (even if it asks the customer to pay a higher amount).

If you have any other questions, keep 'em coming will try to answer as many as we can. At least you guys are taking into consideration customer opinions which is a great thing.

EDIT: Also what kind of post FUP speed are we talking about here? If its not extremely low (5-10 mbps) then I would say FUP of 500-1000GB is very much acceptable.

EDIT2: Also if possible rather than going for gigabit speeds, I suggest aim for low speeds (100-300mbps) with better latency to international servers. As of now with excitel anything which I do (browse or download) which is not under their peering agreement takes a huge hit in terms of speed (on a 100mbps plan I usually get 20-25) on international servers.

Peace

 

[Aakash Malhotra]

i personally hate fups. i have excitel and they dont have fups. my data usage for a month is about 1tb. this is when i only browse internet on my pc ( 1080p-1440p youtube videos, bluray encoded movies , steam games and other downloading stuffs) and my parents use it for mild browsing on their phone and laptop.

if you give 1Gbps then put a fup on it , it would defeats its purpose. its very easy to eat up the data at this high speed.

my personal opinion is that 1Gbps is not needed . our market is still young for 1Gbps. something like 300/500 Mbps can do the job well.
imo this speed is enough for downloading big files and watch 4k content . something like 500 Mbps and 2tb fup can work.

if you think about it how many users will be there in delhi who uses upwards 1tb data? not a whole lot if i were to guess. most users stay within 500 gigs.

 

[BoltFi]

Thank you very much @achaudhary997 - how does it sound to have 1Gbps till 300GB and 100Mbps after that, OR 1Gbps till 500GB and 50Mbps after that. It's hard to explain to the customers that these FUP's help ISP's run their network congestion free and abuse free but I can understand that from customers view point, I do like Unlimited before I was into all this stuff.

Also, Biggest problem is no affordable routers are there that can support 1Gbps and direct fiber, I will need to use some kind of ONT (1-1.5K)to convert fiber to RJ45 and 1Gbps capable router costs ~2.5K at minimum and people are not willing to spend that much I think OR the other alternative is Huawei HG8546M - I need to import them from China.

About International bandwidth - We will not be throttling international bandwidth at all. What you will see is what you will pay and get.

Honestly, We are not any big company - we are going to do what we have been doing with the seedboxes. We want to fill the gap that market is not concentrating in - Service and Speeds. I have been reading around in this forum there are customers of Excitel and others, calling CS 12 times and getting nothing, waiting for more then a month and getting nothing. Seriously? Are you guys offering a service or a shit-bag subscription. Internet should be like a good sex, Once you have it you always crawl for the kind of service. haha 🙂

@Aakash Malhotra - I wouldn't mind if person is doing 10TB a month over peering. Does my above offering amazes you at all? If not, I will try to plan something new. I will not come out to the market unless I have something differentially good and appealing, Even if that comes with the razor thin profits.

Although, I was told by TATA that 60% usage in Delhi is over peering and 40% is over Transits. If that's really the case, Then I can actually offer 2TB+ usage on 1Gbps speeds. but before that I think I will need to understand the market more.

OR, What I can do is, I can do FUP on transit over 500GB and peering will still remain unlimited. Not sure, I am super confused. Please guys shed some light. 🙂

 

[a.c]

@BoltFi
Post FUP speeds of 50Mbps+ are more than enough in my opinion. Also since you said that you are thinking of keeping peering unlimited that is also a plus point. As far as routers are concerned I agree with you on the fact that no affordable routers are there and people are not willing to spent the money on the routers.
What I would suggest is that give the customer options (something like this) so that you can cater to a large group of consumers: [I know that you were planning to go forward with only gigabit plans]
1) Say they(consumers) are not ready to invest money and/or pay rent charges for the equipment, you offer them a slower plan of about 100Mbps (or whatever can be achieved on a lower end router).
2) The consumers who really need those gigabit speeds, you provide them the routers required, I am pretty sure they will agree to pay the extra cost for the routers.

As for the excitel customer care, I will agree with everyone who says their service is shitty. But alas I have no other alternative offering good speeds with unlimited FUP and low prices so I am stuck with them.

The TATA fact is also correct, even my usage is 70% peering only. But when I need that 30% I am left struggling on the excitel network.
The putting FUP only on the transit is also a great option (I would love something like this).

One doubt don't you think peering with gigabit speeds will affect the network speed (I know it depends on the equipment and not many people will be using the full gigabit speeds at the sametimes). Most consumers who don't know how a network works will come back to you complaining that they are not getting their claimed speeds if such thing happens. Unless you planning to limit the number of households connected on a single 10/40/100Gigabit Fiber cable. (It would increase the cable cost drastically though)

P.S. [Off-topic] Now I actually think that it was a good decision that I bought a ubiquity edgerouter and unifi AP AC . A lot of ISPs are getting over the 100mbps speed limit.

 

[Aakash Malhotra]

both the plans you mentioned sound amazing . Nobody offers post fup speeds that high . this will make you stand out from the crowd. however along with these plans you should also have something with high fup ofcourse with increased cost.

about the routers, just supply the customer ont and let the customer buy his own router? mention on your website some recommended routers. like excitel does this. they have a separate faq section on their website where they have listed recommend routers that they have tested in their offices.

with excitel the issue is when the content is peered you will get full speed but when the content is not peered you will struggle to get even 5Mbps. shows how sh i t their network is. when i used to complain about this they used to give bull sh i t reason that xyz stuff is not peered hence you are getting low speed. their speeds on transit traffic s u cks balls.

i personally would be happy to pay 1k-1500rs for a 100Mbps fup free connection that is stable in all regards inspite of say 500Mbps/1Gbps that does not work properly.

as with the above guy , i am facing the same situation. excitel is the only isp in my area. that is why i am stuck with them

Edit- also you are running a business and not a charity. please plan with sizeable profits in your mind. you have to run your home lol

Edit 2 - your idea of keeping peering ult and putting fup on non peering traffic sounds great. i too would be happy to see how it works.

 

[BoltFi]

Hello @Aakash Malhotra , @achaudhary997 and @Sushubh,

After some thoughts I came up with these plans:

Rs. 899 - 200Mbps Unlimited
Rs. 999 - 1Gbps till 500GB then 200Mbps unlimited (Peering will not be throttled, Just transit. Peering will still remain 1Gbit)
Rs. 1499 - 1Gbps till 1000GB then 200Mbps Unlimited (Peering will not be throttled, Just transit. Peering will still remain 1Gbit)
Rs. 2000 - 1Gbps Unlimited till 3000GB then 200Mbps Unlimited (Peering will not be throttled, Just transit. Peering will still remain 1Gbit)

You can always buy extra 500GB of data for Rs. 600

I am not sure how to advertise this - Problem is mass users will not understand this thing. Should I advertise it 1Gbit Unlimited? Not sure. What I can do is, I can advertise Rs. 999 plan as 500GB Cap plan and 1499Rs. plan as unmetered.