Spectra to offer 100 mbps net speed; invest Rs 100 cr

Spectra has started wifi network design for enterprise customers and cloud migration service

Broadband services firm Spectra, formerly Spectranet, has plans to upgrade all its connections to minimum of 100 megabit per second speed, and invest Rs 100 crore for doubling its reach in the country.

"We have rebranded our company as Spectra because we will be providing more solution than just Internet only. Besides, we want to set benchmark for broadband that it should be minimum of 100 mbps download and upload speed on our network. We are migrating all our customers this speed," Spectra MD and CEO Udit Mehrotra told PTI in an interview.

He said the company has priced plans competitively, starting at monthly rental of Rs 899 for 150 GB limit and existing customers on plans below 100 mbps speed are spending close to the new plans.

"We expect to complete this migration in about two months. Customers are willing to adopt to new plans because they have to only pay about Rs 100 more. Most of the customers have already shifted, only few are left," Mehrotra said.

The company provides only fixed line broadband services across 8 cities: New Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai.

"We, at present, reach out to around 2 lakh households. This year we will invest Rs 100 crore which will be spent on our network expansion to cover 4 lakh households. We enjoy around 20 per cent market share in fix broadband services in cities where we operate. Now we are looking at 30 per cent share after expansion of our network," Mehrotra said.

While data tariff war, started with entry of Reliance Jio, has impacted many of the small Internet service providers, Mehrotra said that India is a huge market for broadband service providers and company is targeting segment where people want unfettered high speed broadband for use at home by all family members.

The company has also started wifi network design for enterprise customers and cloud migration service for small and medium business.

"At present, companies get a wifi router and all their employees connect to that wifi which effectively does not offer optimum speed. We are now offering enterprise customer wifi network design where they can efficiently use bandwidth. Also, we are building our product portfolio to help SMBs migrate to cloud," Mehrotra said.