Airtel Net PC – Surf the Web without a virtual CPU

Have you ever imagined accessing the Internet when you only have a monitor and a keyboard without any virtual CPU?

Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile service provider in partnership with Nivio has brought up this ‘Net PC‘ which only has a mouse, keyboard and a monitor. This project has come up mainly to give access to Internet for people living in villages where Broadband is a dream that never came true. Now with this Airtel Net PC, a user can access the Internet with a minimum speed of 256 kbps.

To connect to the Internet, this device has a small box called as Nivio companion.

This whole product only costs Rs.7499 which includes a 15 inch LCD monitor, a keyboard, a mouse and a Nivio Companion box.

Once you have this package, all you need is an Airtel Broadband connection which has 3 different plans that a user can choose from.

The Base plan starts at Rs.699, Intermediate plan costs Rs.899 and higher end plan costs Rs.1199. All the 3 plans promise a minimum speed of 256 kbps and will give you 100 minutes of free voice calls per month. The bandwidth for all the 3 plans is 3 GB/month and the total storage that you get is 10 GB.

Note that this 10GB space will be present at a remote Nivio server and not at your Nivio companion box.

Any documents that you need to download from the Internet will be downloaded to this 10 GB space. Since everything happens at the server end, you need not bother about OS updates, Virus checks etc.

The companion box also has a USB port incase you need to store any data locally with you.

But since you do not a virtual CPU Unit with you, there may also be some setbacks like the absence of a CD/DVD writer etc. You cannot install any software and can only use what is being provided by Nivio and if there is any problem some where, you have nothing to repair and just hope that a call to the customer service solves the problem or else, the service person will have to come and check your product.

As there is no processor, Games cannot be played and neither any movie can be watched.

So you can understand from this that the main aim of this project is to give access to those people who are unable to visualize a Broadband connection till now but not to replace a PC.

If you are interested in this you may request Airtel to contact you. Or you can call the toll free number 1800 103 0121 to enquire more about this product.

Note: As on today (4 June 2009) this service is only available in the NCR region.