28 GB Data For Rs 345: Airtel's Latest Offer To Counter Jio

The tariff battle in the Indian telecom sector has further intensified with Bharti Airtel launching an aggressive mobile data plan to counter Reliance Jio. Market leader Bharti Airtel has announced a plan for select customers wherein its subscribers will be offered 28 GBs of  data along with free local and STD calls for a period of 28 days under a pack priced at Rs 345. Airtel's Rs 345 offer comes days after billionaire investor Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Jio announced a new 'Prime' membership offer, though it will charge for its services from April 1. Reliance Jio's Prime plan continues the benefits that the telecom arm of Reliance Industries had offered under its Happy New Year scheme.

Reliance Jio's Rs 303 Prime offer, for example, gives Jio subscribers free voice calls and a daily cap of 1 GB of internet data.

Airtel has also placed a limit on internet usage at 1 GB per day. Airtel customers can use 500 MBs of data during day and the remaining 500 MB data can be consumed between 12 am and 6 am, said a customer care executive of Bharti Airtel. Recently, Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal said that the new tariff announced by Reliance Jio is very aggressive and unsustainable, and the industry will respond to it with more competitive plans and additional data offerings.

"Tariffs that they (Jio) have announced are still very aggressive, which means you got to respond. You got to do more packages... you have to throw in more data. All those things need to be done," he had said.

Airtel had on February 27, 2017 waived domestic roaming charges to compete with free voice calls and roaming offered by Jio.

Jio has promised to match the best mobile data usage plan in the market and also add 20 per cent more data to it.