Bharti Airtel, India’s top mobile phone operator, on Thursday cut prices of its third-generation (3G) mobile data services by about 70 percent, in a move to boost usage of the premium services in the country. This move has made it the cheapest 3G data provider in the country

3G services were launched in the country last year by all the telecom giants of the country but till now remain unpopular due to its excessive tariff. Its adoption rate is very low. With the new rates in effect, the above situation will indeed change.

For prepaid users browsing rates for 3G have been brought down from 10 paise per 10 KB to 3 paise for the same amount of data transfer. The new data plan for pre-paid customers, now starts at Rs 10 for 30 minutes of usage, with a validity of one day, Rs 45 for 150 MB with 7-day validity, and Rs 1500 for 10 GB with 30-day validity. Post-paid users will now have to pay Rs 100 for 300 MB and Rs 1500 for 10 GB, each with a validity of 30 days.

The company has also launched Smartbytes data packs for post-paid like in the broadband service where in the users who exhaust their monthly usage limit, are offered a choice of different 3G data top-up packs, allowing users to control their spending. These packs are priced from Rs 80 for 200 MB to Rs 300 for 1 GB.

We hope that this reduction will soon increase the 3G customer and the trend will be followed by other telecom operators as well.