Category — plan

If anything looks  too good to be true, then most probably there is a catch. Well the saying applies to lifetime validity plans from many service providers in India as well.

• Lifetime is not lifetime: Even though they advertise as lifetime, in reality it is not a lifetime offer. Most of these plans are valid till the validity of the license of the service providers. That means the lifetime validity plan from airtel is valid till 2014 and the lifetime offer from vodafone is valid till 2015. 6 years or 7 years is not lifetime for sure. Reliance lifetime connection is valid till 2021 though.
• need to recharge periodically The biggest attraction of lifetime validity plan is that you do not have to recharge the phone every month. That does not mean you can just get a lifetime card and forget it. Vodafone requires you to recharge your phone with 200 Rs every 6 month to stay active. Even reliance communication has a simliar requirement. I could not find a similar requirement in Airtel though.
• You have to pay a much higher rate on outgoing calls: Too bad if you want to make outgoing calls. At 1.99Rs/min for local calls and 2.75Rs/min for std calls, the vodafone plan looks like a robbery to me. Airtel and reliance are much better with 1Rs/min for local calls and 1.5rs/ min for std calls. 
• Airtel and vodafone charge 1 rs/ sms!!!! Reliance is silent about sms charges. Just head over to the internet cafe and send sms messages for free.

Verdict: Make sure to read the fineprint before going for any plan from the indian service providers. Alternatively you can subscribe to my feed. Airtel lifetime validity plan looks like the best of the lot and stay away from vodafone.

This is going to please all mobile addicts especially the ones who have to use a lot of std minutes. The 2 leading cdma players in India i.e reliance and tata indicom have come up with unlimited calling plans.

 The unlimited plan from reliance looks more attractive as it is available to all tim customers at a rental of Rs 799. Whereas the unlimited plan from tata indicom is available for only the blackberry users. Other bloggers have done a good job of covering these unlimited plans from reliance and tata indicom. So I will take the lazy way out of spreading some serious link love. You can read about te plans here and here

Activation Fee Rs. 99/-
Plan Enrolment Fee Rs. 200 (Converted to Security deposit after 6 Months)
Usage Discount of Rs. 100 for first two bill cycles

Idea Mobile Prepaid Tariff Plans

Lifelong Starter Pack
MRP Rs. 299
Validity Lifetime
Talk Time Rs. 100
Idea To Idea Talk time Rs199(Valid for 45 days)
Call Rates
Idea to any local phone: Re1.00
Idea to any Std phone: Rs1.50
Local SMS Re1.00
STD SMS Rs1.50
International SMS Rs5.00
Application SMS Rs3.00

Idea Mumbai MyGang Tariff Details
Starter Pack Rs. 99/-
Talktime Rs. 0/-
Validity 0 days

Local Calls:
Gang Members 10p / min
Other Idea Mobiles (11 pm to 7 am & Weekends) 50p / min
Other Idea Mobiles (7 am to 11 pm) Re. 1 / min
All other Mobiles (including Maharshtra & Goa) (11pm – 7am & Weekends) Re. 0.50 / min
All other Mobiles (including Maharshtra & Goa) 7am – 11pm Re. 1 / min
All Landlines (Mumbai) 7am – 11pm Re. 1 / min
All Landlines (Mumbai) (11pm – 7am & weekends) Re. 0.50 / min

SMS charges
To Gang Members (24hrs) 10p
Local SMS 7am-11pm 20p
Local SMS (11pm-7am & weekends) 10p
National SMS 7am -11pm 50p
National SMS (11pm-7am & weekends) 25p
All STD calls (incl M&G Landline) 7am-11pm Rs. 1.5 / min
All STD calls (incl M&G Landline) 11pm – 7am & weekends Rs. 1 / min

Daily deduction of 50p (for 1st 6 months). Post 6 months Rs. 1.50 Daily Rental

Validity Option:
Rs. 155 Recharge Validity 6 months Talktime Rs. 0/-
Rs. 255 Recharge Validity 12 months Talktime Rs. 0/-
Rs. 355 Recharge Validity 12 months Talktime Rs. 125Free SMS 500

I had previously written about vpower offer from virgin mobile. There are some more cool offers from virgin mobile as well. You can send local messages to your freind on any network for free now.

However the offer is not valid if you use it while on roaming. Source

virgin mobile seems to be too aggressive with its pricing plans. If you do have a virgin mobile connection, then make sure to take advantage of the same. After coming up with the idea of paying you for incoming calls virgin mobile has come up with one more scheme called vpower.

There are several plans in this scheme. The STD Pack costs you 31Rs. It enables you to call anyone in India @1Rs per minute for the next 30 days. Simply awesome.

Or look at the SMS Pack which gives you 600 free local sms for 39Rs or only 6.5 paisa per sms.

There are also a YoYo (V2V) Pack that allows you to call any other local virgin mobile number at 10p per minute. Considering that your freind gets 10p per minute of call, it is actually a free call scheme.

Go ahead and have fun with your virgin mobile connection and let me know your experience in the comments.