Based on what I have read on the India Broadband Forum, it is pretty clear that airtel is throttling torrents on their network.

A lot of people have complained about it. I have personally noticed it on my own computer.

There are several problems with this. First of all, this goes against the principles of network neutrality. Airtel needs to stop tinkering around with web services. We have seen them offering higher speeds specifically on YouTube for the IPL broadcast. Airtel Movies is another service that sort of goes against network neutrality philosophy.

The other problem is logic. Airtel has no truly unlimited plans above 256kbps. All of their so called unlimited plans have a fair usage policy. So basically, users have a set limit ranging from 4GB per month to 150GB per month. After that their speeds are dropped down to 256kbps. This alone makes it a sheer stupidity on their part to throttle torrent based downloads.

The company officially would not comment on it of course. The only thing we get out of them is that they do not do anything and their speed claims are restricted to their own servers. We hope that sanity would prevail in the end and the company would allow a throttle free internet experience to their customers in the future.