India’s largest Mobile Service operator and Global global telecommunications company Bharti Airtel, today revised its default GPRS charges and have hiked Internet browsing tariff by more than 150% !. Interestingly this time no price drop, rather Airtel hikes up the 2G GPRS/EDGE browsing charges.
Now Airtel GPRS/Mobile Office users willbe charged at 30p/20KB pulse rate(existing rate is 30p/50KB) In other words, now a Airtel GPRS customer will have to pay around Rs.15/MB in stead of the existing rate Rs 6/MB.
The new tariff will be applicable from 5th January 2010. This change in tariff does not impact on new postpaid and prepaid subscribers who enroll any tariff plan in last 6 months as per TRAI rules. All such customers upon completion of 6 months on their existing plan will be charged as per above revised mobile Internet browsing tariff.
Airtel also announced that from 28th December its "Airtel Live" GPRS/WAP Mobile Portal browsing will be charged at the rate of 30p/20KB which was earlier free of charge.
With the hike in 2G GPRS-Mobile Internet tariff, it seems that Bharti Airtel threw water over its mobile users who had hopes of “cheap tariff” for upcoming 3G Mobile and Data services which is expected in January 2011.
