
Excitel plans cable-to-fiber push, eyes two million new users on IPTV
Excitel, a Delhi-based home broadband provider, is gearing up to transform India’s cable TV households into fiber broadband users by replacing traditional set-top boxes with Android-enabled IPTV boxes. The company aims to onboard 2 million new users in 18 months through this hybrid model.
“We want to replace legacy cable TV boxes with Android boxes and give users OTT, YouTube and live channels, all at the same price they pay today,” said Vivek Raina, CEO and co-founder of Excitel. “The user gets more, the cable operator runs just one network, and we grow faster without laying new fiber ourselves.”
IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television, is a method of delivering television content over the internet offering an alternative to traditional cable or satellite TV. India’s largest telecom company Bharti Airtel also rolled out IPTV across 2000 cities last week.
Excitel currently has 1 million subscribers, with its largest base in Delhi (500,000), followed by Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and markets in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. The company operates in over 40 cities, relying heavily on a partner-led model where local cable operators manage last-mile fiber.
“We work with 3,000 cable operators, many of whom still serve 1.5 to 2 million cable TV users,” Raina explained. “They already pull fiber for our broadband connections. We're asking them to retire their coaxial networks and offer IPTV + OTT through Android boxes.”
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Despite India’s digital leap, only 4 crore homes have wireline broadband, compared to over 70