Tata Teleservices Limited extended its telecom service in the Assam circle by introducing a range of products. It includes prepaid and postpaid mobile services, Photon a high-speed internet access, fixed wireless telephony under the brand name Walky Talky and many other value-added services.

To introduce its brand to the Assamese locals, Tata Indicom is offering the North East Corridor Starter Pack for Rs. 199/- wherein subscribers in this region can make long distance calls across Assam for 50 paise per min.

Tata Indicom’s products and services will be available at exclusive Tata Indicom showrooms and several other retail stores across the state. As a part of their first phase, they have already installed over 134 cell sites in 31 different towns.

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Telcos in India have finally realised the true potential of the rural markets. As most of the subscribers come from these areas, Airtel decided to roll out a dedicated prepaid plan to please them.

Quite evident by its name, Airtel’s Rural Pack is one of them. This pack is available to users residing in villages with a population of less than 20,000. Here are the details:

• Price: Rs.50
• Talktime: Nil
• Validity: Nil

We Say: Rural Pack is one of a kind. This is because it provides free talktime to users over a period of 9 months in 3 installments. The user would get free talktime of Rs. 25 every 3 months. The call charges, though affordable, could have been lower. Local calls and SMS cost Re.1 and Rs. 1.5 for STD calls and SMSes.

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The advertisement says ‘Offer valid till stock lasts’ but how much is the stock left when this scheme is pretty much valid since June? Anyways, overlooking the marketing ploys here, if you’re in search for a new number then MTNL is giving away a prepaid number for free to its existing MTNL Landline/Trump/Garuda/Dolphin users. Customers will get a Trump SIM card with a 30 day validity and Rs. 20 worth of talk time.

MTNL Mumbai gives its users another reason to rejoice. With the biggest festival coming up, MTNL users will be able to send and receive unlimited free MMSes. This offer is applicable to all its prepaid as well as postpaid users and will last till October 31, 2008. To activate GPRS/MMS service, a user can dial 1503 or send a SMS by typing ACT GPRS to 444 (prepaid) or GPRS4 to 555 (postpaid).

With the festive season coming up, BPL Mobile has come up with festive benefits to woo new users. This one is called the Utsav Card and has been rolled out for people joining the BPL family. Here are the details:

• Cost: Rs.201
• 3 year validity 
• Calls to BPL mobiles: 20paise 
• Calls to other lines: 70paise 
• STD calls: Rs.1.25
• Local and National SMS: 30paise 
• Night calling to BPL: 10paise 
• Night calling to others: 40paise 
• STD calls: 90paise 
• Local and National SMS: 15paise 

BPL Mobile

Airtel’s strategic partnership with Singapore-based SingTel can prove a boon to Airtel users if they happen to visit Singapore this weekend. To commemorate the Inaugural of 2008 Formula 1 SingTel Grand Prix, Airtel users visiting Singapore from September 25 to September 29, 2008 will be able to enjoy free incoming calls in Singapore. Users need to manually set their roaming network to SingTel to avail this offer.

Currently the existing international roaming tariff for all incoming calls on the SingTel network is Rs. 52/- per minute for Postpaid customers and Rs. 50/- per minute for Prepaid customers.

Vodafone recently launched a fully loaded Magic Box handset. The pack is called Fully Loaded Magic Box 527 and is priced at Rs. 3499. As for the handset, it features:

• A VGA camera
• 128×160 65k colour display
• Music player which plays audio format like MP3, AAC, AMR and wav
• Stereo FM radio
• Voice recording
• Bluetooth
• USB charging port
• PC Serial cable
• 1 GB Memory Card (expandable upto 2GB)
• 2 years warranty

This handset comes along with standard Vodafone Magic Box schemes like:

• Prepaid card with lifelong validity
• Free talktime worth Rs 10
• Free callertune for 30 days
• Free Vodafone alerts for 30 days
• Calls to local mobile numbers at 30p/min for 30 days
• Free 200 mins of Nightspeak (from 11 pm to 8 am) to local Vodafone numbers for 30 days

The much hyped and talked about YoYo ad by Virgin Mobile is making rounds amongst the youth. But what does the Ad trying to convey? The Ad basically talks about how, through Virgin, you can make free calls to your pals.

The plan communicated in the Ad is the Vpower Plan. Pay Rs.28 per month and get calls to other Virgin Mobile numbers @ 10paise. It works like a YoYo because the person you call earns the same amount thus making it FREE. There is a condition to the plan which goes like this:

• Calls to a Local Virgin Mobile India number will be charged @ 10p/min only till first 700 VMI minutes or 30 days from the date of recharge (whichever is earlier)
• No talktime or validity
• This recharge is not applicable on a Demo/Employee/ Virgin 2 Virgin Plan or any other non-commercial plans

Despite the controversy which hounded Blackberry services and RIM for quite some time, there is a continuous upward trend in the number of Blackberry users in India. And seeing it as an opportunity, Reliance Communications announced the availability of prepaid Blackberry services which is a first-of-its-kind in India. Prepaid plans for Blackberry start from Rs. 1,099 which goes upto Rs. 1,599 giving the user the benefits of free local SMS, voice and STD calls. Supported phones are:

BlackBerry 8830 World Edition smartphone, which operates on both CDMA & GSM networks
BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone on CDMA networks
BlackBerry Curve 8300 smartphone on GSM networks
BlackBerry Pearl 8100 smartphone on GSM networks
BlackBerry Pearl 8130 smartphone on CDMA networks, and
BlackBerry 8703e smartphone on CDMA networks

RCom Blackberry Prepaid

Remember TRAI’s initiative for full talk time on top-ups? Well the date for compliance was yesterday and Airtel officially announced to be the first private one to reduce processing charges. From now, Airtel prepaid users will only have to pay Rs. 2 to Airtel as administrative charges and the applicable service tax. Other operators will follow the compliance order soon.

UPDATE: Government’s own MTNL has also taken the plunge and now charges processing fees not more than Rs. 2.