It seems Airtel has struck a double deal. First the iPhone and now they are being tagged as an exclusive operator for HTC’s Android phone that will be unveiled today, which for the record will also be India’s long awaited Android offering.
The price is expected to be around Rs. 25,000 and I think it is in line with iPhone 3G’s price that will be after the launch of iPhone 3GS. Let’s hope HTC releases Magic and Airtel has decent data plans to support the phone.
Bharti Airtel is on a roll; last month it achieved the 100 million subscriber mark and became the first Indian telecom operator to have such a huge consumer base. A few weeks later, it was awarded the best telecom service provider in Asia-Pacific by Frost and Sullivan. Today, it announced another achievement, which is again first in the category. It became the first ever Indian telecom operator to cross 5 million subscribers in a Metro circle, and we are referring to Delhi/NCR out here.
According to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Bharti Airtel had maintained its top position in the GSM-space and has a market share of 32.48 per cent. The last one million subscribers of these five million have been added in only 13 months. On this achievement, Bharti Airtel’s CEO for Delhi & NCR ( Mobile Services), Shashi Arora said,” This is a testimony to the faith and trust that the customers of the Delhi & NCR have reposed on Airtel and we would like to take this opportunity to thank every single one.”
Airtel and Vodafone, who jointly account for over 170 million of the 400 million cell phone users in the India, are all set to bring Apple’s latest iPhone, called the iPhone 3Gs to India. Apple which has exclusive tie-ups with Bharti and Vodafone has confirmed that their latest gadget will hit the Indian shores this August, however, they still haven’t given a word about its launch date or the pricing. [Read more…] about iPhone 3Gs to be officially launched by Airtel and Vodafone in August
Ok, we don’t know how consumers think about Airtel but one company does reckon they are the best service provider, not in India but the whole Asia-Pacific region. Frost and Sullivan, a US based telecom research and consultancy firm recently bestowed India’s largest telecom operator with this tag.
In a company statement this Tuesday, Bharti Airtel’s chief executive and joint managing director Manoj Kohli said, “Our company has been recognized for its overall service quality and has been adjudged the service provider of the year in the “Best of the Best” category. The awards recognise Bharti Airtel’s commitment to technology and business innovation, and globally benchmarked quality of services.”
Amongst others, Vietnam’s telecom major Viettel has been named as the best emerging markets’ service provider. Unfortunately, no other Indian telecom service provider made it to these awards.
Ed’s Note: Our overworked brains ditched us. Sorry for the goof up, we have added the plans and edited the story accordingly.
When TeleGyaan did an exclusive review of MTNL’s 2G/3G plans, one of our avid readers voiced his opinion and asked us to look at other operators in the landscape. Given the reader-friendly blog we are, here is a post comparing all the GSM – Blackberry plans on offer::
[Read more…] about Exclusive: All (GSM) Blackberry Plans reviewed
Airtel and Blackberry makers, RIM have announced a new plan specifically for India. The plan dubbed as BlackBerry Personal Mail service plan offers Airtel Blackberry users unlimited email and instant messaging services for just Rs. 499.
However, before you jump with joy, let me clarify it again – its “Unlimited email and instant messaging”. In other words, you don’t have unlimited internet browsing but only IM and push email service.
Features:
We Say: Blackberry is all about push emails and I think if the user is looking for emails on the go, this is the thing to go for.
Airtel is playing the handy role of a marketer to sell Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic phone. Today, I received a mail from them saying they had a ‘great’ offer for me. However, my expectation of some monetary waiver was short-lived because the greatness in the offer was not monetary but was emphasized on services. Purchasing the phone from any Nokia Priority Dealer or The MobileStore, a user will be eligible for:
We Say: Nice try Airtel but the offer ain’t that good to make me jump into the XpressMusic bandwagon. Offering some discount off the phone rather than the accessories might have made me interested.
Airtel continues to shower its love on subscribers in Delhi & NCR region. Today they have announced an SMS Dhamaka pack for the prepaid users that can help them to reduce their monthly SMS tariff. There are basically five options starting with just Rs. 13 and going up to Rs. 112.
Packs:
Rs. 13 – 30 SMS free (Local)
Rs. 42 – 100 SMS free (Local & National)
Rs. 46 – 200 SMS free (Local)
Rs. 94 – 250 SMS free (Local & National)
Rs. 112 – 1112 SMS free (Local)
All the packs carry a validity of 30 days and are applicable to lifetime as well as non-lifetime customers.
A quick note to inform all our readers that Airtel has posted a small note of caution on their website about an unsolicited fraud SMS. It asks the users to ignore the message as a reply to it could cost them up to Rs. 500. Ouch! Full text below:
Unsolicited fraudulent SMS’s are being sent to various subscribers informing them that they have won a prize and need to call an international number to collect their prize. When calls are made to the number in the text message the subscribers are billed a high amount (upto Rs 500 per minute).Subscribers are cautioned not to respond to such SMS’s.
It’s a good thing that Airtel is notifying its customers but looks like a half-hearted attempt from them. Sending an SMS to its subscribers would prevent gullible users from getting fooled.
PS: If you have received the message or have replied to the same, do let us know in the comments.
Airtel has announced that its service mChek has successfully crossed the one million users benchmark. For those of you who are not aware of the service, mChek is a service which makes payments easy through SMS. Be it any kind of transaction – paying bills, buying tickets, etc. your bill is settled through an SMS.
On this successful achievement, Airtel has added some additional aspects to its application, thus helping users to do more. These include: