Airtel GPRS new plan, Rs.19 for 200MB!

Airtel is getting more competitive in it’s GPRS offerings by offering one more GPRS pack at very affordable price. My friend Ashwin posted a screenshot sometime back which says about this new pack:

So, as per the screenshot if you easy recharge with Rs.19, you can browse free till 200MB. Though it’s unclear how much validity it carries. If you know, do let everyone know via comment section.

Update:

As Chaitu commented here, validity of this plan is 3 days.

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Airtel has recently rolled out a new GPRS pack which is very competitive with GPRS packs offered by new providers like Docomo. With new plan user gets unlimited browsing all through the month for just Rs.98. Though Airtel calls it “unlimited”, it comes with fair usage policy limit of 2Gb. If you are using GPRS only on mobile device, 2Gb is more than enough for a month. If you are connecting your laptop or PC to browse internet, then you should be counting on those bits!

To get this plan, just “Easy Recharge” with Rs.98. But, before that activate Mobile Office on your number. To do that dial *567*11# & you will get a confirmation message. Dialing this activates basic plan of Mobile Office, which is 30paise/50kb, pay as you browse. After you ERecharge with Rs.98, it overrides the basic plan & you will get 2Gb of free browsing. It’s instant

If you don’t have settings send ALL to 543210

Update:

To check your usage details & expiry date of the pack dial *123*10#

Airtel has two unlimited GPRS packs for it’s prepaid customers. One day pack offers you unlimited browsing all the day for Rs.20. Similarly you can go for weekly pack for Rs.99 & do unlimited browsing throughout the week. Getting these packs activated is quite simple via SMS shortcodes as follows:

• To activate daily pack (Rs.20), send MO to 56123
• To activate weekly pack (Rs.99)  send MO to 56122

Since I’m not an Airtel user, I don’t know more about other GPRS packs Airtel is offering. If you are aware of any, please share it with others in comments section.

Cross-Posted from Saurabh Minni’s blog with his permission

Well its was well known that mobile numbers with 8 are going to start soon. But it so happened that my dear friend Daaku took a new Tata Docomo connection. Now the amazing thing was that it starts with 805xx-xxxxx. So now if I try to call this friend of mine, my Vodafone network tells me that its an invalid number. I was confused and so I asked my friend daaku to call me. I got his number in caller ID but calling it was again not possible. Obviously its not mistake in dialing the number, rather its a stupid things that Vodafone and possibly other networks too have done.

So here is my guess what has happened. Vodafone, takes the number +91805xx-xxxxx as 91 for country(that India), 80(Code for Bangalore) and 5 would be Tata Indicom as they provide landline with that series. Interestingly Vodafone seems to have not configured its network to this change which happened for mobile numbers starting with 8.

I tried contacting Vodafone customer care, they seemed to be unaware of the issue and they said they would get back to me soon(24hours it seems).

But the point here is, whats TRAI and DoT doing. Have they not informed the operators of this change or are the operators at lax. Who ever it might be, the fault must be found and it must be ensured that in future such stupid things do not happen.

Airtel is withdrawing it?s one of the popular GPRS plan Airtel Online in effect from May 5th. Airtel Online is a restricted GPRS plan which allows to browse internet only on Mobile Phones. For browsing on computer or laptop using your phone as modem, you should have EDGE plan ?Mobile Office? charged Rs.99/week for Pre-paid & Rs.140/week on Postpaid. Airtel was charging Rs.5 per day for Airtel Online which was pretty cheap & allowed users to browse net on the go.

From May 5th Airtel introducing the new plan VBC (I still don?t know the expansion!) which allows seamless browsing. Airtel announced to charge 30paise/50kb for this plan. I still don?t know what ?Seamless? browsing means for Airtel. Whether they are going to open up all the ports & give access to POP, IMAP servers? And whether users are allowed to browse internet on computer using this? We have to wait & watch what it?s gonna be.

After May 5th you can send ?VBC ACTV? to toll free number 222 to activate this new GPRS plan.

Note: This post is based on an SMS I received from Airtel.

Recently, from almost a month SMSs from Banks, Service Providers, Companies have started prefixing something like ID, AT, VK…etc. What’s all this after all!!? Here I am to explain you what it is! Normally these SMSs originates from a Bulk SMS provider where you can use 11 digit Alpha-Numeric characters as "Sender". But there were some security risks in this method. I was able to give a phone number as "Sender" & it appears as that person at the recipient end. Basically there was a chance to send SMSs as a different person! I was actually using this to fool my friends.

But the new TRAI regulation insisted bulk SMS providers to restrict the "Sender ID" to 8 characters. Other three characters should be used to specify who is the service provider & where it’s originated from. Say for example: HDFCBANK sends an SMS to you using bulk SMS provider located at Tamil Nadu which uses Airtel. You will receive it as AT-HDFCBANK. First character specifies which service provider the message is being originated & the second character specifies from which location it’s originated. Here is the table which has details of these SMS codes:

Service Provider Codes:

So, combination of these two constitutes the first two digit of ?Sender? followed by an hyphen (-) & actual sender name.

Though I started photo blogging long back, not shared it with anyone. www.bangalorepix.com is the photo blog I started long back. Photos posted at Bangalore Pix are live pictures. I posts them from phone itself once I take them. I am using Flickr’s post to blog feature which creates unique email ID to post pictures. Sending pictures to that ID will not only posts it to Flickr, but also specified blog. I am also using twitterfeed to post tweets about the new photo entry to Twitter.

The Big Idea:

The big idea behind this photo blog will come into picture in long run. There are drastic changes happening in Bangalore due to Bangalore Metro & few road widening projects. As I keep posting pictures of different streets, popular places of Bangalore, in few years you can see how the place was looking before & now. And that’s keep continuing! I have taken this as my lifetime project & keep posting till my end! It will be a great experience to look back at old pictures taken years ago.

Right now I am using Nokia E66 to post the pictures, but picture quality is not so good since it has 3.2 MP camera. It will be great if somebody sponsors a good camera phone (Nokia? Sony Erricson? Samsung?)

Few people use PIN locking system to lock their phone to avoid un-authorised access. Though this is a good option, it pisses you off sometime. Three wrong entry of PIN code will result in SIM blocking. Once SIM gets blocked, phone starts asking PUK code to enter. If you again enter wrong code for three times, SIM gets completely blocked. You have to walk into your service provider outlet to get a replacement SIM card.

PUK code is a SIM specific code assigned by your service provider. No way you can guess & enter it. So, when it asks for the PUK code, don’t do anything, get the PUK code from your service provider. Airtel has a easier way of getting PUK code. For getting PUK code of a Airtel number, send PUK<space>PhoneNumber to toll free number 121. You can make use of any other Airtel number to send this message since your SIM might have been blocked already.

If the above method doesn’t works or your service provider is not Airtel, call to customer care using any other mobile phone which uses the same service provider. They will ask some details about you to make sure you are the owner of the SIM card. Questions might include your billing address, email ID, numbers you recently called or messaged etc. They might even ask you number printed on the SIM card, so be prepared with all details before calling them. Once you get the PUK code, enter it into the phone & your phone will return to normal.

Found this crazy offer while walking on the street on my way to home. Airtel is offering lifetime validity connection for just Rs.99. It was actually Rs.59 till today evening & Airtel changed from 6 PM as shop keeper told me. Call rates are also pretty impressive, Airtel to Airtel is 50 paise/call * to other mobile it’s 60 paise. Shopkeeper said there is no minimum usage restrictions! I asked about SMS charges, he was not quite sure about that. All he said “You can take SMS pack at Rs.30/month.

Without any second thought I bought one connection. This is a limited period offer by Airtel which Airtel could withdraw at any time. So go grab your connection before it closes!

Let me first tell you what is Push Email, you will receive email as soon a new email is received by the mail server, just like SMS. To use this service you need IMAP or POP access to your mail server & also your mail server should support anyone of them. With POP access you can download your emails to phone, but server & phone will not be in sync. For ex: if you delete a mail on your phone, it will be still there in server. IMAP is more advanced which syncs both mail boxes. Whatever you do on any place, gets reflected everywhere. Thankfully Gmail provides IMAP access for all the accounts, you have to enable it by going to “Settings–>Forwarding & POP/IMAP”. Basic GPRS plans like Airtel Live & Vodafone Live doesn’t provide IMAP access, you have to activate Airtel Mobile Office & or Vodafone Mobile Connect.

Configuring on Phone:

This configuration is for Phones which come up with inbuilt mail client, if your phone doesn’t have that try using gmail mobile app available at http://m.google.com.

Open email client on your phone, goto “Settings–>Add new email” & configure as mentioned below:

Incoming Mail Server:
Email/user ID: Your Gmail ID
Password: Gmail Password
Incoming Mail Server: imap.google.com
Mailbox name: Gmail (you can use anyting)
Mailbox Type: IMAP4
Security Ports: SSL
Port: 993 or Default in some phones

Outgoing Mail Server:
Email/user ID: Your Gmail ID
Password: Gmail Password
Outgoing Mail Server: smtp.google.com
Security Ports: SSL/TSL
Port: 465 or 587 or Default in some phones

After configuration connect to your mailbox, now you wil receive emails as soon as they arrive!