3G Tariff War Begins in India Our Take18 months back, Tata Docomo turned to be India’s first private mobile operator to start 3G services, followed by Reliance, Airtel, Idea and Vodafone. State owned MTNL and BSNL are in 3G business since 2009 3G was delayed to launch in India, but due to high tariff, poor coverage as well as lack of affordable devices 3G services did not take off properly.

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Though BSNL and MTNL tried to cut down 3G services in between but no response from other operators – they did not care about state owned operators price cut of 3G tariff. Ultimately BSNL had to hike 3G tariff.

But pictures are changing fast; BSNL revised its 3G data plans in this April. At the end of April Aircel did the job by introducing unlimited (with reasonable FUP) 3G data plans (a.k.a. Pocket Internet Smart Plans); just like they were the game changer on 2G data space.

Following Aircel’s introduction to cheapest 3G plans Airtel was the operator who leads the incumbents like Vodafone, Idea and RCom.Funny thing is media is not giving proper credit to Aircel who break the ice of 3G market.

I personally think and have checked many times that coverage and 3G enabled phones are not main issues behind the slow uptake of 3G. It is mostly due to high tariff of 3G. Once 3G tariff goes down people will consider moving to a 3G handset – it’s the face. 3G handsets are now cheap, even android smartphones are available at sub-5K level.

Another point I must share that on 3G operators cut down extra usage charge from 10p/10kB to 3p/10kB (by Airtel, Vodafone, Idea). Aircel on the launch has kept the charge at 3p/10kB. BSNL and MTNL charge 4p/10kB and 2p/10kB respectively. Reliance on postpaid 1GB plan charges 20p/MB – the cheapest in market while prepaid users have to pay 10p/10kB.