Dabba Network: Proving Product–Market Fit Prior to Token Launch

Key Insights

• As of September 2025, India had 46.1 million fixed wireline broadband subscribers, representing less than 5% penetration in a country of over 1.4 billion people. Connectivity is primarily scaled through mobile access, leaving fixed infrastructure underdeveloped relative to other large economies such as China and the United States.
• India’s broadband and wireless internet market is dominated by three national operators, which together account for 61.7% of total internet subscribers. This centralized state of the telecom industry has produced uneven coverage optimized around high return-on-investment (ROI) and high-Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) clusters, resulting in selective rollout, uneven service quality, slow remediation, and chronic underinvestment in peri-urban areas that sit between urban centers and rural regions, as well as other long-tail neighborhoods.
• Dabba operates as a decentralized execution model that is aligned with India’s regulatory framework. By aggregating Local Cable Operators (LCOs) as its deployment and maintenance layer, Dabba decentralizes last-mile execution, lowers capital barriers, accelerates deployment, and aligns incentives around coverage, uptime, and service quality.
• Dabba has demonstrated clear product-market fit over the past 12 months. In one year, the network scaled from 1,600 to 100,000 deployed hotspots, grew daily active users from 5,000 to 500,000, expanded LCO partners from 3 to over 50, and increased monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from $9,600 to $600,000.

Primer

Dabba is a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) built on Solana that operates as an internet service provider in India. Dabba is a marketplace that unbundles the traditional telecom stack by separating infrastructure ownership, last-mile deployment, and service operations into distinct roles, enabling independent participants to build, operate, and deliver broadband through a shared network platform.

Dabba’s network architecture is built around hotspots, which are wireless access points installed in homes, buildings, or community locations that distribute internet connectivity to nearby users. These hotspots are owned by hotspot owners, participants who purchase Dabba-compatible hardware and lease it into the network to receive rewards in DBT, the native token. Local Cable Operators (LCOs) are small, geographically-focused internet service operators that perform last-mile installation, which is typically found outside of urban areas, and provide maintenance work in these specific neighborhoods or towns. Within Dabba, LCOs are responsible for installing hotspots, connecting them to upstream internet access, maintaining service availability, and supporting end users.

Upstream connectivity is supplied by Backhaul Providers, which deliver the high-capacity internet connection that feeds LCO networks. Backhaul is a required component of the Dabba network, but it is not vertically integrated into a single centralized provider. Instead, Dabba aggregates backhaul demand across its LCO network and leverages national partnerships to secure pricing and terms closer to those of large operators, while allowing LCOs to connect locally. This structure lowers effective backhaul costs, preserves local execution, and enables Dabba to maintain network-level quality of service and expansion velocity as the network scales.

Once hotspots are deployed, they provide broadband access to end users on LCO-operated networks, with usage metered through Data Credits. Data Credits are priced at $0.012 per gigabyte and function like prepaid data, allowing users to access the internet. Network-wide coordination is maintained through a shared telemetry and settlement system that tracks deployment status, uptime, and usage. DBT rewards are distributed based on network activity, ensuring that hardware ownership, operations, and service delivery remain economically aligned without requiring centralized control.

For a complete look inside Dabba Network, check out their Dashboard.

India’s Connectivity Reality

Internet access in India is widespread, but the structure of that connectivity reveals a persistent delivery imbalance. Most users access the internet through mobile networks, which are designed for intermittent, individual use rather than continuous, high-capacity connectivity. Fixed broadband refers to dedicated home and business connections that provide continuous, high-capacity, and reliable service. As of September 2025, India had 46.1 million fixed wireline broadband subscribers, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), representing less than 5% penetration in a country of over 1.4 billion people. Despite being the fifth-largest economy in the world, India’s broadband penetration remains materially lower than that of other large economies such as China and the United States.

This penetration gap reflects how internet usage in India has scaled primarily through mobile access. While this has made India one of the world’s largest internet markets by users, it has not translated into equivalent fixed broadband infrastructure. Mobile networks are optimized for intermittent, individual usage and degrade under sustained, shared demand such as education, remote work, and small business operations. Fixed broadband deployment remains concentrated in urban cores and undersupplied outside Tier 1 cities, leaving a large share of underlying demand unmet.

India’s broadband and wireless internet market is highly concentrated, with three national operators accounting for 61.7% of total internet subscribers. This concentration channels infrastructure investment toward areas where returns can be recovered fastest. As the World Bank notes, fixed broadband rollouts become economically viable first in dense, high Average Revenue per User (ARPU) environments, where fiber, middle-mile, and backhaul costs can be amortized efficiently. As a result, deployment concentrates in higher-income urban neighborhoods, while peri-urban areas and other long-tail regions remain structurally underserved despite clear underlying demand.

Telco Fatigue in India

India’s broadband market exhibits a layered form of telco fatigue, defined as persistent user-facing gaps in access, coverage, reliability, value, and service quality that arise from how connectivity is built and expanded. Low fixed broadband penetration and centralized deployment decisions concentrate infrastructure in a narrow set of geographies, leaving households, schools, and small businesses with uneven and unreliable connectivity despite high overall internet usage. This pattern is most visible in pre-urban districts and small towns on the edges of major metropolitan areas, such as outer Thane, Vasai-Virar, or the expanding belts around Pune and Bengaluru, where mobile internet access is widespread but reliable fixed broadband remains inconsistent or unavailable for everyday institutional and household needs.

Coverage and Reliability Fatigue

Fixed broadband availability and performance vary sharply by geography, reflecting where network expansion has been economically prioritized. Rollouts have been concentrated in dense, higher-income neighborhoods where payback periods are shortest, while service quality outside these areas becomes inconsistent and fragile.

A 2025 LocalCircles survey of broadband, fiber, and DSL users found that 62% experienced recurring disruptions or speeds below what was promised, with 37% reporting three or more service interruptions per month. Reliability issues are compounded by slow remediation. In the same survey, 51% of respondents reported that complaint resolution took longer than 24 hours, signaling limited field capacity and weak service responsiveness once networks are live.

The TRAI publishes quarterly Performance Monitoring Reports (PMRs) tracking wireline broadband quality-of-service metrics, including downtime, fault repair timelines, and speed compliance. The findings in these reports indicate that reliability issues persist across operators and regions, underscoring that service quality remains unresolved at the system level in India’s fixed broadband landscape.

Value and Experience Fatigue

Fatigue also manifests through value and experience gaps, where advertised affordability diverges from realized access. While entry-level broadband plans are marketed as low-cost, effective connectivity is constrained by installation charges, wiring fees, lock-in periods, and limited plan flexibility. These frictions disproportionately impact renters and lower-income households, narrowing the practical footprint of fixed broadband. Among connected users, dissatisfaction remains elevated. The same 2025 LocalCircles survey found that 66% of respondents were willing to switch providers for better quality, service, or pricing.

AI Tailwinds and the Rising Demand for Fixed Broadband

India’s next wave of internet demand is being driven by the integration of AI into core economic activity, changing connectivity consumption, and shifting network performance requirements. The NASSCOM AI Adoption Index places India at 2.45 out of 4, indicating early-to-mid stage enterprise adoption, with 87% of enterprises actively using AI solutions.

This shift exposes the limits of mobile-first connectivity because AI adoption raises baseline network requirements beyond what mobile networks are designed to support. AI-enabled services demand persistent throughput, low latency, and predictable performance, while mobile networks are optimized for bursty, shared usage. As a result, congested mobile networks struggle to reliably support AI-driven education, business, and institutional use cases, particularly in dense neighborhoods, schools, and small-business clusters.

Network-level data already reflects the shift toward AI as a sustained connectivity requirement in India. Ericsson, a leading provider of mobility connectivity, published a Mobility Report that identifies measurable and distinct GenAI traffic on operator networks, confirming that AI usage has become a persistent traffic category. At the infrastructure layer, India’s data center market expanded capacity by 48% year-over-year, according to JLL’s India Data Centre Market Dynamics Report (H1 2025), showing that both network operators and infrastructure providers are already building to meet this sustained demand.

Centralized vs. Decentralized Telecom Execution

The shortfall of fixed broadband in India reflects the limits of a centralized telecom execution model. Fixed broadband expansion is driven by capital-intensive national rollouts optimized for return efficiency, concentrating investment in dense, higher-income areas while leaving many neighborhoods underbuilt despite clear demand.

A decentralized telecom execution model reorganizes network expansion by shifting deployment and maintenance to local operators who already serve end users. Rather than a single national entity determining where connectivity is commercially viable, expansion occurs through many parallel, small-scale deployments driven by localized demand. Dabba operates as a practical implementation of this model, aggregating Local Cable Operators (LCOs), community-embedded internet providers responsible for last-mile deployment and maintenance, as its execution layer. These operators already serve households and small businesses but have historically lacked standardized tooling, scale economics, and negotiating leverage. Through Dabba, LCOs gain access to standardized hardware, centralized network monitoring, billing and customer management software, and aggregated backhaul partnerships. This enables them to expand fixed broadband coverage with lower capital requirements, faster deployment timelines, and incentives aligned with coverage, uptime, and service quality rather than aggregate ARPU optimization.

Dabba’s network expands in response to local demand rather than centralized capital allocation. In neighborhoods such as peri-urban apartment clusters, school corridors, or small commercial areas where connectivity demand exists but subscriber density or ARPU falls below national operators’ return thresholds, Dabba enables local cable operators to deploy capacity immediately by extending or upgrading existing networks. A centralized telecom operator would typically defer the same area due to slower payback and lower portfolio priority.

Dabba’s execution model operates well within India’s existing regulatory framework. The Public WiFi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI) policy explicitly unbundles roles across access point providers, public data offices, application providers, and registries. This allows small operators to participate in broadband delivery without becoming licensed telecom carriers, while ensuring compliance with identity verification, billing, and lawful access requirements.

Whether decentralized or centralized execution wins is not the question. Large telcos remain essential for spectrum management, long-haul transport, and nationwide mobility. Decentralized networks complement this by addressing last-mile delivery, particularly in dense urban neighborhoods and underserved localities where centralized economics break down.

From an execution perspective, the contrast between India’s centralized telecom expansion over the past three decades and Dabba’s growth over the last 12 months is stark. Centralized rollout scaled through long capital cycles and consolidation, favoring operators able to sustain prolonged investment while smaller providers were acquired, bankrupted, or forced to exit. Dabba’s decentralized execution model scales in the opposite direction by aggregating community-embedded operators and expanding where demand already exists. Capacity is added in parallel across neighborhoods without waiting for national rollout programs or large upfront commitments, enabling localized demand to drive network-scale growth within a single year.

Proof of Product-Market Fit for Dabba Network

Dabba’s growth over the past year demonstrates clear product-market fit driven by real customers, repeatable deployments, and expanding participation from Local Cable Operators (LCOs), validating both demand-side adoption and supply-side execution. Over the course of 2025, the network scaled from 4,600 hotspots sold and 1,600 deployed, serving approximately 5,000 daily active users and generating $9,600 in monthly recurring revenue with $6 ARPU, to more than 23,000 hotspots sold, 100,000 deployed, 500,000 daily active users, $7 ARPU, and over $600,000 in monthly recurring revenue by year-end.

On the supply side, LCO participation continues to expand. The number of LCO partners grew 17x from 3 to more than 50 in the past year. According to the Dabba team, demand from prospective LCOs has resulted in a waitlist of more than 100 LCOs seeking to onboard to the network. Many of them bring existing subscriber bases onto the network, migrating or upgrading customers as Dabba improves service quality, operational efficiency, and unit economics.

The onboarding of new LCOs creates a compounding growth flywheel. Each operator contributes immediate demand through an existing subscriber base while expanding the network’s physical footprint. In return, Dabba increases LCO competitiveness relative to national telcos by providing a unified operator stack, including standardized hardware, centralized network monitoring, billing and customer management software, and aggregated backhaul access. As operators improve service quality and unit economics, successful deployments generate referrals and inbound interest from additional LCOs, reinforcing network expansion and sustaining a growing onboarding waitlist.

Cityborgaon Cable Network illustrates how decentralized execution performs in practice. Operating in Borgaon (Bahe), Maharashtra, the operator expanded from cable television into a full-service internet provider supporting banks, schools, government offices, and dairy cooperatives, all of which require continuous connectivity. After integrating with Dabba, Cityborgaon delivered institutional-grade connectivity at a local scale, converting existing demand into stable broadband service without waiting for centralized approval for a rollout. The outcome is sustained connectivity in a location that would otherwise remain outside national deployment priorities.

Closing Summary

Connectivity challenges in India are mainly due to poor execution in infrastructure development. Fixed broadband penetration remains structurally low despite clear and growing demand, constrained by centralized deployment models that prioritize ROI efficiency over broad-based access. As AI-driven services push internet usage toward persistent, high-reliability workloads, the limitation of mobile-first connectivity will become increasingly apparent. This creates a widening gap between demand and delivery that centralized telecom models have struggled to close, particularly outside economically prioritized urban cores.

Dabba represents a fundamentally different approach to scaling broadband infrastructure. By decentralizing last-mile execution through Local Cable Operators, aligning incentives around service quality and coverage, and operating within India’s existing regulatory rails, the network has demonstrated that fixed broadband can scale faster, more efficiently, and more inclusively. Its year-end 2025 metrics show real product-market fit, with rapid growth across deployments, users, revenue, and operator participation, all driven by repeatable execution rather. As India’s data demands intensify, Dabba is positioned not as a replacement for national telecom infrastructure but as a complementary execution layer capable of extending reliable broadband to millions of users who remain underserved by centralized rollouts.