Airtel officially launched pan-India 3G services today at a press conference in Bangalore. In a surpisingly sedate event, Airtel unveiled tariff plans, 3G services and a new wireless 3G dongle.
While Bangalore and the rest of Karnataka will get Airtel 3G immediately, it was revealed at the conference that the rest of the circles would be getting the same very soon. Airtel also showed a coulple of their additional 3G services including live video streaming, movies on demand, songs download and live TV broadcast. Except for the live video streaming, all other services worked without a hitch at the press conference.
The main 3G plan from Airtel has a basic monthly rental of Rs. 650 which gives a user 1.25GB of data use. If a user crosses that data limit, then he/she will be charged Rs. 10/MB of use till the bill reaches Rs. 2,000. At that point the bill is capped so that a user will never have to pay more than Rs. 2,000 but the speed is also brought down to 128kbps. Airtel did say that the network is capable of speeds up to 21MBps but there was no mention of realistic speeds that users can expect on a regular basis.
Along with the main plan, Airtel is also offering, what they refer to as ‘sachet packs,’ essentially time bound 3G packs available for smaller denominations such as Rs. 10, Rs. 45, Rs. 60, Rs. 200, Rs. 450 and Rs. 750.
While Bangalore and the rest of Karnataka will get Airtel 3G immediately, it was revealed at the conference that the rest of the circles would be getting the same very soon. Airtel also showed a coulple of their additional 3G services including live video streaming, movies on demand, songs download and live TV broadcast. Except for the live video streaming, all other services worked without a hitch at the press conference.
The main 3G plan from Airtel has a basic monthly rental of Rs. 650 which gives a user 1.25GB of data use. If a user crosses that data limit, then he/she will be charged Rs. 10/MB of use till the bill reaches Rs. 2,000. At that point the bill is capped so that a user will never have to pay more than Rs. 2,000 but the speed is also brought down to 128kbps. Airtel did say that the network is capable of speeds up to 21MBps but there was no mention of realistic speeds that users can expect on a regular basis.
Along with the main plan, Airtel is also offering, what they refer to as ‘sachet packs,’ essentially time bound 3G packs available for smaller denominations such as Rs. 10, Rs. 45, Rs. 60, Rs. 200, Rs. 450 and Rs. 750.