Bharti airtel, has announced the commercial launch of its 3G services in the cities of Chennai and Coimbatore. Airtel has got 3G license for 13 circles, it plans to launch services in all the circles by march this year.
Speaking at the launch, Atul Bindal, president-mobile services, airtel would offer services like video call, live streaming of video, high speed internet, mobile TV entertainment, social networking etc in Chennai and Coimbatore through 3G technology”.
Bharti airtel has appointed Cinestar Karthi as its brand ambassador for its Tamilnadu circle, he also become the first airtel 3G customer in Chennai.
Airtel users can avail the services through existing SIM cards. For laptop users airtel has also come up with 3G dongles.
Airtel has introduced four 3G plans for its customers, the first one follows pay as you go model, called PAYG VBC (Pay as you go). This plan is launched for customers who want to experience 3G for a short while, under this plan customer will pay the same prevailing data rates as on 2G service, but with the advantage of a faster mobile broadband.
It has also launched Sachet Plans, to drive mass trial and adoption of 3G, these plans will have validity of lesser than or equal to 10 days. A customer can buy an Rs 8 recharge and he can surf 3G services with a 10MB data download limit for a day,
Apart from that airtel mobile subscribers can also buy an Rs 45 recharge which will be valid for three days but the user can surf the net for only 30 minutes in the three days . Also, an Rs 63 recharge will also be available for 65 MB download valid for one day.
Standard plans, targeting mid to high-end users of data have also been launched and will have a validity of 30 days. The recharge options include Rs 101 for 100 MB, Rs 201 for 250MB, Rs 451 for 600MB and Rs 751 for 2GB data access. Similar plans are also available for post paid users.
For the high end users airtel has launched FlexiShield Plan, This plan has a combination of free data usage and a low inbuilt volume based charging rate (Rate that applies after you exceed the free data usage). The rental for the plan is Rs 675 in which you get 1.25Gb of Data and 30 days validity.
While Sachet Plans are available only on Prepaid, FlexiShield Plan available on both postpaid and prepaid. The call rates will remain the same as prepaid.
the service provider has also introduced a service which will send personalised and timely data usage alerts to its customers, so that they do not get huge bills.