Airtel Mobile Plan | Connectindia

Our mobile sector is facing one of its worst patches, thanks to the ever increasing inflation and over-enthusiastic 3G jumps by most of the big players in market in the recent past. After the relatively mild response received by 3G services despite their advertising blitzkrieg, some known names in the telecom industry are taking the easy way out to cut their losses – that is, by shifting the losses on us. In case some of you haven’t noted as yet, Vodafone mobile plan in postpaid domain has already taken a jump and that too without much ruckus.

While we act finicky, ensuring that we choose the best mobile plan, our operators are keeping us oblivious to the pending rate hikes by 20-30%, which would come in effect from the month of March. Bharti Airtel has also accepted that similar changes could be seen in Airtel mobile plan and other Airtel deals to ensure that the company continues to notch up good figures.

It is a Catch 22 situation for all of us with almost all the larger operators jumping the gun, including state owned BSNL. While you and I are busy taking immense care to save mobile bill, it will hardly bear any fruit thanks to the industry that seems oblivious to their customer’s plight.

After the chaos that ensued in Pune with BSNL taking corrective measures to recover its long outstanding dues from the private operators, Haryana circle is the next to suffer. Subscribers of Airtel mobile plan as well as Idea’s services have been left in lurch as BSNL has cutoff connectivity at all POI’s (Point of Interconnection). The customers availing services under the Vodafone mobile plans have also been relegated to similar circumstances. Resultantly, even the BSNL customers have suffered with no or restricted connectivity to all these networks.

Earlier, Tata Teleservices and Reliance had appealed before the telecom tribunal and had obtained relief. The tribunal had requested the state-owned telecom giant to continue providing connectivity. BSNL has argued that this ruling was applicable only to the appellant and hence others should pay up or else be ready to face these interconnectivity issues.

With Idea being backed by powerhouses like Birla and AT&T, Vodafone a worldwide telecom major and Airtel fighting on Mittal’s influence, this issue is sure to spill beyond the telecom circles and possibly into political realms. The COAI is leading negotiations with BSNL on behalf of all the private telecom players but no breakthrough is in sight as yet. BSNL insists that this was a result of lack of response from private sector to the repeated reminders requesting payment of long pending dues. Any guesses who’s been hit the most in this standoff? Unfortunately, it’s again the customer.