Well, it was during the last IPL (2010) season that Airtel has increased the Broadband speed (to 2Mbps) for all its customers (for free) to facilitate them to watch the online stream of IPL matches. That IPL is over and Airtel has since then decided that High-speed broadband should start from 1Mbps and hence accordingly increased the minimum speed of its users to 1 Mbps, for free again, although only in certain metro cities. I was one of the beneficiaries of that move, my 512Kbps speed was increased to 1Mbps without any extra cost.
Now, Airtel has decided that minimum speed for high speed Broadband should be 2 Mbps. Again, this only applies for 10 cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Noida, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Faridabad and Pune. For other cities, the minimum speed will be 1 Mbps.
It is yet to be seen whether Airtel will upgrade the speed themselves for users with speeds less than 2Mbps and 1Mbps in two segments mentioned above. Consciously, Airtel has been pushing users in Metro’s with 1Mbps speed to upgrade to 2Mbps for just Rs.100 more by sending several promotional emails. So one can assume that this speed upgrade won’t be free like before.
In the 10 cities mentioned above, the 2Mbps plans are as follows:
Rs.649 – 3GB
Rs.799 – 6GB
Rs.999 – 10GB till up to Rs.1999 for 150GB
From Rs.999, your plan will be unlimited, but the high speed transfer rate of 2Mbps will only be up to the mentioned data limit. Any usage above that will be at 256Kbps following Airtel’s Fair usage policy.