Bharti Airtel has recently rolled-out 3G services in various parts of India and had thereby registered its presence among other 3G Mobile Operators in the country such as BSNL, Reliance, Tata Docomo and MTNL. Even though such service was highly anticipated by all the subscribers to avail some high speed data connectivity within an affordable tariff rate, the actual scenario is not impressive at all as most of the service providers failed to satisfy the consumers in facilitating usable standards and affordable rates to use such service. The launch of Airtel 3G service was much awaited in this regard as their service is considered one of the most reliable and affordable as compared to other networks. They have introduced a number of 3G plans in India which can be seen in the table as mentioned below.

Bengaluru
Prepaid	Postpaid	Free Usage	Validity
Rs.9	N/A	10MB	1 Day
Rs.60	N/A	65MB	3 Day
Rs.45	N/A	30min	1 Day
Rs.103	Rs.100	100MB	3 Day
Rs.200	Rs.200	250MB	30 Days
Rs.450	Rs.450	600MB	30 Days
Rs.750	Rs.750	2GB	30 Days
Rs.675	Rs.675	1.25GB	30 Days
Chennai/Coimbatore
Prepaid	Postpaid	Free Usage	Validity
Rs.8	N/A	10MB	1 Day
Rs.63	N/A	65MB	3 Day
Rs.45	N/A	30min	1 Day
Rs.101	Rs.100	100MB	30 Days
Rs.201	Rs.200	250MB	30 Days
Rs.451	Rs.450	600MB	30 Days
Rs.751	Rs.750	2GB	30 Days
Rs.675	Rs.675	1.25GB	30 Days

Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Chennai
Video Call	5 paise/second (Applicable on Local, Roaming and STD)

*All the rates mentioned above are subject to change from time to time by Airtel. **Last Updated: Jan, 2011.

As seen from the above tariff, the rates are not satisfactory with Airtel too and one might end up paying lots of cash to avail the service as none of the plans seems to be easily affordable to general users. But as reviewed by many subscribers, the service is not bad and speed is excellently well as compared to any other networks operating in India. They also offer some special packs such as Pay As You Go which will charge you depending on your usage and is accordingly fixed at 15p/20KB. The service is presently available only in the aforementioned places but the availability of Airtel 3G service in other regions like Delhi, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir is expected to be made available in the next couple of months i.e. within March 2011.

For using the service, you can simply upgrade the existing 2G plans to switch over to 3G plans without requiring to change the SIM card or the mobile number. There are however some terms mentioned for the 3G users which states that roaming will be applicable only within the same network, video calls are restricted only to local and STD calls and one can recharge with another plan only when the left over balance of the previous recharge is below or equal to 50MB in case of data pack.

To subscribe to any of the Airtel 3G Plans, you may consider to either SMS 3G to 121 or call the toll free number 12134 from your mobile which would however depend on whether the service is available in your city so that you may opt to apply for it.