Aircel slashes rates to join 3G price war

Aircel, India's fifth largest telecom company by subscribers has joined the on-going 3G price war by cutting data plan prices for both prepaid and postpaid subscribers. In May, Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom firm by subscribers, had kick-started the 3G price war, forcing Idea and Vodafone also to cut prices. Reliance also followed suit, albeit for its data card customers.

Industry experts say Airtel slashed its 3G plan prices as it began rolling out 4G services in Kolkata and Bangalore in the last two months, dragging other players also into the price war scenario. Airtel, Aircel and Reliance offer 3G services in 13 circles across the country.

Aircel has come out with some innovative plans to make up for its late entry into the price war scenario. Apart from offering the cheapest and the most value for money 3G tariff plans, Aircel has also made all its plans unlimited in order to checkmate the issue of 'bill shocks'. Aircel has reduced the validity of the plans to as low as a day and then gradually 3, 7 and 15 days, thereafter increasing it to a month.

Here's a look at what the plans that Aircel is offering-

The cheapest plan comes for Rs 8 and offers unlimited data usage, but not without a catch -- the 3G speed (up to 3.6Mbps) is only sustained till 50MB, after which it is reduced to 128kbps. The same logic applies to all the unlimited plans except for the Rs 697 and Rs 997 plans that offer 3G speeds up to 7.2Mbps (instead of 3.6Mbps) till the 5GB and 10GB limit respectively. Also, to make things simple, the company has kept the same tariff plans for both mobile and dongles, although the plans for dongles start from Rs 198 onwards.

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