RCom has come up with another good value for money plan designed for users having moderate local and STD usage. It’s called the Platinum Plan 225 and here are the details:

Monthly Rental: Rs. 225
CLIP: Free
Free: Rs 100 worth Mobile-to-Mobile local calls; Rs 100 worth Local/National SMS
Calling charge to local mobile: 30p/min
Calling charge to local landline numbers: 80p/min
Local/National SMS: 30p/SMS
STD calling charge to all numbers: Rs 1.25/min

That sums up to 333 local mobile calls and 333 all India SMSes for Rs. 225. However, this plan is available only in major cities and only for those who opt for a new connection. RCom’s yet another move to lure new customers!

RCom announced on Sunday that it has commenced its GSM network across Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Lucknow and Ludhiana on a test basis by providing approximately 10,000 test SIM cards to its employees.

Talking about Mumbai, RCom has invested around Rs. 800 crore in Mumbai for setting up 2,500 towers and other necessary infrastructure. RCom would be the second player after Idea Cellular to launch its GSM services in the city in this year. It is expected that RCom will open its services for public by the end of this year.

Also another speculation making rounds is that Tata Teleservices are also planning to launch their GSM services around the same time, although no official announcement is made by Tata’s telecom arm.

Reliance GSM which planned to enter the Mumbai circle might just be planning out for its grand launch. GSM users in Mumbai are seeing a new network added to the list of available networks. This one is called IND15. There are news about Reliance GSM testing its networks in Mumbai and this might just be a semi-official confirmation. 

With already new players entering the circle, this would add one more to the count. Let’s see if the rookies can face the biggie in India’s busiest and the most profitable circle. 

Just search network manually to find it. The IND 799 is the Idea network and the IND15 is the mysterious one.

Airtel, Vodafone and RCom have revealed their latest offering from their Blackberry portfolio. They will soon be selling RIM’s Blackberry flagship phone, Bold at a hefty price tag of Rs. 34,990. This is the best Blackberry phone to come out of RIM’s stable and if you’re not so price conscious then you might be able to pick it up from the end of this month, if you’re an Airtel or Vodafone customer or by end of October if you’re under RCom GSM service.

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

RCom a couple of days back added the Nokia 2505 to its range of handsets. This stylish clamshell comes with a sleek and elegant body and a 65,536 colors display with 128 x 160 pixels resolution. It is equipped with a Quick-press flashlight and FM radio. It also has a two-way handsfree speakerphone.

RCom is offering this bundled offer of connection + CDMA handset for Rs. 3099. Along with this, it is offering free talktime worth Rs 600. The sad part is, this talktime can only be used to make local calls from Reliance Mobile to Reliance Mobile and it is allotted to you in installments of Rs 50 per month for 12 months.

On the whole, this offering is not lucrative enough to tempt buyers to immediately go and grab it; on the contrary if you are looking to buy a Reliance connection then this offer can be given a thought.

Reliance Communications is extending its Jaadu Pack to Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) customers in Tamil Nadu. The new edition of the pack will be called as Business Jaadu 135. It will cost Rs. 135 and offer validity for a month. The benefits for the customer are unlimited Reliance calls within the state and other local calls will be charged at 49 paise/minute. RCom reckons a user can save up to 35% on their monthly bills.

The pack will be subsequently rolled out in other circles.

Monday: Indian capital saw a major player surfing in the GSM competition. RCom launched its GSM services in Delhi albeit it was a soft launch.

Tuesday: We showcased Airtel Celebrations 399 plan. Not so new but worth mentioning.

Wednesday: All hell broke loose when Airtel announced the launch date of the mighty iPhone 3G. It won’t run on 3G network right on because of the spectrum issues but the news made us excited as much as you were reading it. Pricing is expected to be out by this week.

Vodafone users will also be getting their hands on the iPhone on the same day.

Friday: Less than a week is left for Tele Gyaan’s first and India’s 61st Independence anniversary. And
Tata Indicom comes out with an Independence recharge to free all its prepaid users from recharging for a year with low call charges.

Saturday: Airtel’s been promoting mChek pretty smartly. To adopt more use of SMS based payment system, they are offering incentives to prepaid as well as postpaid users.

RCom has quitely launched its GSM services in the capital of India making them the first operator to offer both CDMA and GSM services. The service is not commercially available as of now, but it is reported that Reliance employees are the first ones to gain access to it and after successfully testing, it will be rolled to the public.

Source

Reliance Communications on Monday became the fifth mobile operator in Asia to cross 50 mn mobile subscribers mark. The company announced that it added 1.74 mn new mobile subscribers during the month of June 2008 which is the highest ever monthly subscriber addition to its user base.

RCom’s closest rival Bharti Airtel added the highest number of subscribers among all GSM operators in June 2008 at 2.55 mn subscribers making it a total user base of 69.3 mn.