In a first in India, T-Fibre to roll out free internet services to 4,000 households from Sept.5

Hyderabad: For the first time in the country, Telangana Fibre Grid Corporation Limited (T-Fibre) will provide unlimited free internet to 4,000 households in three mandals from September 5. The family members can browse 300 channels including Telugu channels on their TV apart from browsing the internet, virtual desktop and T-SAT education channels.

The T-Fibre is claimed to have a network latency of less than one millisecond, and its response will be must faster than the regular networks which have a latency of 20 to 30 milliseconds.

The major advantage of T-Fibre’s initiative was students could view the T-SAT network channels live without any buffering disturbance and relying on YouTube.

Following instructions from Industries Minister D. Sridhar Babu, we are introducing free internet service to 4,000 households with the Rs 90 crore Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), sanctioned by the Central government as part of the BharatNet Project under the Proof of Concept (PoF) model, T-Fibre managing director Venu Prasad Panneeru told Deccan Chronicle on Monday.

He explained that T-Fibre was engaging a management service provider (MSP) to make district multi-system operators (MSOs), regional MSOs and local cable operators (LCOs) to provide free internet services to 4,000 households using separate set-top boxes, which will be provided at free of cost. The households in Muttaram mandal in Peddapally district, Andole mandal in Sangareddy district and Maddur mandal in Narayanpet district will get free internet services from T-Fibre from September 5 onwards.

According to Prasad, every household spends at least Rs 1,000 on average on dish TV service and internet. The T-Fibre’s main objective was to provide the same services to each household at a cost of Rs 300 per month, covering internet, virtual desktop, 300 TV channels and T-SAT integration, among other services.

Based on the response to the pilot project, T-Fibre plans to provide high-speed internet services to villagers across the state at Rs 300 per household. Prasad said the Central government was also keen on the response to the pilot project so that it could chalk out a detailed action plan.