Airtel Mobile Office GPRS packs for postpaid users, starting Rs.99/month

Pre-paid users get all those cheap GPRS packs & post-paid users are always ignored! I don’t understand why all these service providers can’t have same packs for both the users! Though it can’t come no way close to what it offers to pre-paid users, Airtel has affordable GPRS packages for post-paid users too. User can opt for one of the following packs based on usage:

• Mobile Office 99: Rs.99 per month, 300 MB of usage. Send mo99actv to 121 for activation.
• Mobile Office 199: Rs.199 per month, 1GB of usage. Send mo199actv to 121 for activation.
• Mobile Office 299: Rs.299 per month, 2GB of usage. Send mo299actv to 121 for activation.

For normal mobile browsing, twitter, facebook, orkut, uploading pics once in a while, 300MB must be good enough. If you have plans to connect your phone to PC to browse internet, it’s better to choose a better pack.

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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.

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#

Tata Docomo has announced five new GPRS packs as follows:

-To pull internet settings please sms “INTERNET” to 52270 and save them as default settings on your mobile

-To get Recharge Instruction for all packs: Call 12526(toll free) OR Dial *135*<pin># OK

-To activate the Rs. 5/- Daily Pass,  SMS  ”GPRS” to 121

-For more information on the TATA DOCOMO GPRS Packs visit:  www.tatadocomo.com/gprs.aspx

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.

I had been to Nokia developer conference few weeks back. Met lot of interesting people there, shared ideas, it was fun. I also met Mayank there & got to know about SMStweet which he built. SMStweet enables user to post Tweets via SMS. To use this service just go to SMStweet.in & sign in using Twitter. This service uses Twitter oAuth & hence doesn’t store your twitter login information. After authenticating with twitter, give your mobile number to SMStweet & start using the service right away.

Send TWT YourTweet to 09220092200 or 09243000111 to post a tweet. If your tweet gets posted successfully, you will receive a response message containing latest @reply made to you.

Tweeting is fun when you share your experiences right away. Once I tweeted from middle of a river! SMSTweet just enables you to do it! No need of a GPRS connection, no need of a fancy device, all you need is a mobile phone & every mobile phone supports SMS (Do I have to say that?). I also find SMStweet useful to post interesting forwarded SMSs to Twitter!

Unlike other network providers who don’t care a shit about their customers & keep pushing their crappy tariff plans, Tata Docomo listens to customers! I wrote a post about Tata Docomo not being serious about GPRS plans & they commented on that post in a day saying they are going to launch unlimited plan soon. They just did what they promised!! I received a mail from them saying unlimited GPRS plan has been launched. Here is the email:

Hello Prashanth,

We can now announce that the long wait has finally ended. That’s right, TATA DOCOMO has launched another innovative offer in the country, Unlimited GPRS plans. Through the Unlimited GPRS plans, we aim to introduce GPRS plans at prices never seen before in the Indian telecom market. Unlimited GPRS plans will be introduced in two packages.

The first package will be the ‘Rs. 15 GPRS Pack’. This is a pre paid pack wherein a customer can recharge with Rs.15, and thereafter the customer will be allowed to access unlimited data for next 3 days by selecting Docomo internet APN on their handsets. The second package will be the ‘Rs. 95 GPRS Pack’. In this pack, the customer can recharge with Rs. 95, and thereafter the customer will be allowed to access unlimited data for the next 30 days. These packages will be applicable to TATADOCOMO home and roaming network only.

For further information please visit the Unlimited GPRS URL: http://www.tatadocomo.com/gprs-edge-faqs.aspx

We feel it is our privilege to let this information out to you before we let it out to anyone else!

Warm Regards,

TATA DOCOMO

This email says it all. Go have fun with unlimited GPRS!!! You can refer to this post for GPRS Settings.

GPRS settings for Tata Docomo is as follows:

Connection Name : Docomo {or name it anything!}
Data Bearer : GPRS
Access Point Name : TATA.DOCOMO.INTERNET
Username :
Password :
Homepage :
Connection Security : Off
Session Mode : Permanent

GPRS is active on Docomo by default, so you just need to add this settings to start using it. On Nokia phones these settings can be added by going to “Settings–>Configurations–>New Access point”. Some phones have this setting in browser settings also. Just look for something which says “Add new access point” & add the above settings. Right now they are charging 1p/kb which is bit expensive. As people from Docomo commented on previous post of  Tech Bangalore, they will launching unlimited GPRS plans very soon. So, keep checking this space for updates on it.

I was obviously attracted to Tata Docomo because of their nice offers. Everything fine & good to make a switch for me, but only thing which is stopping from switching is GPRS/EDGE. Apparently Tata Docomo has not taken GPRS seriously at all. There are no flat rate plans for pre-paid customers. Docomo charges 1p/1kb which comes to 10.24 Rs a MB, which is 10 times more than what I am paying now! Right now I am on Vodafone Mobile Connect 499 plan with 500 MB of free usage, which is less than a rupee per MB.

Docomo has only one flat rate GPRS plan available only for post-paid users, for Rs.99 you get 100MB of usage. But there is no clear information on how much they charge for usage after that 100 MB. My assumption is they charge as per the usage after 100 MB, which is 1p/1kb. My average usage of GPRS per month is 200 MB. If I go for this postpaid plan, I pay 100 bucks for first 100MB, but, more than 1000 bucks for the next 100MB!!

So, the conclusion is, I can’t make the switch until they get serious about GPRS!

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.