I have always criticized Airtel for reasons or more but its time to praise them for bringing 3G tariffs down and I just had a great experience of their 3G services! I thought to give it a try and called activation IVR and selected 10 Rs 30 Mins plan. It was activated in no time though system said it may take 4 hours. I resumed some pending downloads immediately and to my surprise, I was getting constant 9-10Mbps speed! I was in a impression that speed might have been capped for this plan but it doesn't seem so. I was latched to the Vodafone 3G network automatically as Airtel doesn't have its own 3G network here and shares the same from Vodafone and Idea. I disconnected connection and thought of manually switching to Idea 3G. Process was seamless and speed reduced to 6-7Mbps. I think Idea BTS has maximum capacity of 7.2Mbps in my locality. Switched back to Vodafone and I was again getting constant 9-10Mbps. Max it touched is 13.4Mbps. Network monitor was showing total transfer of around 700MB and messaged popped up on phone saying 'You have consumed 1440 Seconds (80%) of your time limit'. After some time, another message popped up saying I have consumed 1620 seconds (90%) and finally another message saying I have consumed all 1800 seconds (thanks to the UMTS and upward standards that data channel is independent and texts or voice calls won't disturb your connection!). Before I could disconnect the connection myself, it was promptly disconnected! Surprise for me as Airtel has deducted account from main account afterwards in such cases previously (one of the reason for criticism towards them). I tried to connect manually after that just to see if I could, and I was connected again and balance deducted as per revised pay as you use tariff (3p/10KB).I could download around 950MB in 30Mins and not a single automatic disconnection and considerable speed fluctuation in between. For a paid price and considering its wireless, its a dirt cheap for now but time based plans have their own limitation as well. They are worthless for only surfing. Overall it was a nice experience with Airtel 3G services and revised plan and I hope standard of service retains in future.
