Airtel’s low rental GPRS plan


Airtel has launched a GPRS plan with a monthly rental of INR 98 with 2GB transfer limit. This is pretty cool as something which was available only to large corporate connections before is now available to everyone.

Here are the details:

Plan type GPRS/EDGE data plan
Plan rental INR 98 per month
Data transfer limit 2GB per month

Some key points:

  • The 2GB free usage is available only on browsing through Mobile Office settings.
  • Once you have consumed 2GB of free usage, you will be charged 30paise/50KB.
  • Mobile Internet surfing is handset dependent. Mobile Internet pack will only work on GPRS / internet compatible handset.
  • The above plan is applicable on data usage only on Airtel network within India.
  • Any usage on International Roaming will be charged as per the visited operator’s roaming tariffs and will not be a part of these plans.

As you can see, the plan is substantially cheaper than all the existing data plans available to postpaid or prepaid consumers. Also, 2GB is a pretty decent limit considering the best speed you can get is 20 kbps. even with casual usage (email, twitter and browsing) one will ideally use up around 500 MB per month. And since this is a mobile office plan, you can tether your laptop/netbook to your phone and access internet on the go on those family vacations.

To activate this pack, sms INTERNET to 121. In case you are already using any existing data plan, call up 121 and request for migration to this plan.

This might be Airtel’s move to stress test its network ahead of the 3G launch. This way they can find out issues and fix them up earlier, as no one would like their network to perform badly and fall prey under TRAI’s 3G guidelines, understandably.

[via airtel.in]


4 responses to “Airtel’s low rental GPRS plan”

  1. There is another killer plan that I've been using since past 6-7 years (don't know if they still give these out) its a Rs 499/- per month unlimited data plan.

    With all India Data roaming free, gives EDGE in all major cities & GPRS in remote locations. Computer tethering works flawlessly not as fast as the Tata Photon+ I use now but gets work done where Photon+ fails.

    What I hear is that these plans are only available in corporate a/c's now. Lucky to have it on my personal number this bandwidth worry free plan.

    Rs. 98/2gb sounds pretty good too. I bet Airtel is counting on people to overuse and pay them more, pretty bad habit to break once you're hooked.

    In Nokia E series days it was not used much except for email polling & Gmaps with occasional putty usage. Since HTC Hero and now with Goog's Nexus One its used very heavily. Have never actually checked bandwidth used but I'm sure it would be hurting had it not been unlimited 🙂

  2. when I activated this scheme, I got three configuration msgs; one for microsoft office, one for internet, and airtel live. I don’t know which one to make my default setting. Also, when I open youtube, the videos do not play. What should I do which makes them play for free? Please reply ASAP

    • You should select “Mobile Office” (Not Microsoft Office – you must have read it wrong) if you want your applications to access internet For example – watching videos on Youtube.

      • yea..sry i meant mobile office..lol..! umm i did dat, but still videos don’t play. ALso by selecting the mobile office mode, it will be free for me till d usage of 2 GB right ?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Read previous post:
Double your Airtel broadband speed with 100 rupees top up

If you are an Airtel broadband user, you can double your speed by adding a top up of INR 100...

Close