I will be based out of rural Tamil Nadu for the next 6 months and was looking for Broadband/Fiber providers (I currently manage with JioFi). But sadly the place I stay has only BSNL broadband and no other player. Airtel folks informed me they offer 'AirFiber' (Vfiber?) with plans 799-999/month and initial setup cost of 4000 (which includes antenna?wiring, router etc). I don't speak Tamil so I might have misheard certain names, details etc. I couldn't find much info on Airtel site/app hence asking here: 1. Does Airtel do buy-back of setup? (agent mentioned 30-40% but he wasn't sure and never did it before) 2. Can I use this setup when I move back to big cities (agent mentioned this is only available in select areas and not in big cities, but he didn't sound confident) 3. Can I use my own router given my stay is only 6 months? (I heard in other thread that for fiber it is compulsory) 4. Should I just get BSNL and manage these 6 months?

“AirFiber” definitely sounds like wireless connection, which would be prone to hiccups and high latency (noticeable especially on video calls). If installation and monthly rent of BSNL is not too much, I’d advice to get that. As wireless connection and 4G LTE hotspot would provide more or less same experience.

Good advice. Will get more info on BSNL and see

BSNL is usually great while it works. When it goes down is when you need to run pillar to post and service depends on the local guy & team. (Treat them well and your connection will be restored quickly). But BSNL cannot be your only option. If you mentioned JioFi works and is okay for a couple of days when BSNL goes down, I’d anyday go with BSNL. Wired line >> any sort of wireless. (As your primary connection) @loud-artist-61521 Walk around the place and speak to your neighbours. Very often, the local cable players offer decent internet (either fiber or even via ethernet) and might be a reasonable option for a short stay.

You might be talking to these people https://airfiber.co.in/ ? I'd somehow found a place in Bengaluru where there's no wired cable provider. 😅 Luckily there's a jio tower some 200m away from this place so TP-Link MR-600 worked out pretty well for me. Apparently you can hook up BSNL modem to the router and run it in wireless mode with failover for 4G as well. Link If the 4G tower is far-ish, you could use LPDA setup to make it more reliable + fast.

I was getting better speed on BSNL fibre in connection in my small town in Rajasthan compared to Airtel boradband in Bangalore

BSNL fiber service is not as bad compared to what their DSL used to be. Goes down for a few minutes every now and then, but should be definitely better than rural 4G . Also call the local cable guys, they might be handling the last mile fiber connection for BSNL anyway, and in some areas they also offer other smaller ISPs (which are anecdotally better in some areas). I am pretty sure the ONT device is re-usable between BSNL and those cable ISP providers.

Thanks everyone for the advice. Getting info on the BSNL offering here.