Aircel Free Basic Internet Plan Offers 64 kbps Free Internet across India

Facebook has been violating Net Neutrality in India with their Free Basics Platform & Aircel is adding more confusion with a plan that has a very similar name. In fact, if you look closely this plan is available to everyone for free with no strings attached.

The service will be available in Tamil Nadu initially & would be later available in different states all over the country. If you wish to give it a try, you can easily opt for MNP (Mobile Number Portability) & move to Airtel. A quick look at the Internet packages can also tell you that the plans that Airtel are better than Airtel & other telecom networks considering that they offer Voice calls along with data packages.

For new Aircel users, the telecom operator would be offering this free service for the first three months. After three months if the users are active on their number, they can continue to enjoy this Free Basic Internet Plan if they’re doing a recharge of at least Rs 150 every month.

We are not sure yet if the existing Aircel customers can move to this new plan or even company is planning to do so in near future. The report added that Mobile Data contributes to almost 14% of the company’s total revenue.

The company expects that to increase down revenue up to 30% down the line in three years. Given the surge in the video on demand (VOD) entertainment on mobile phones, it can certainly be stated that Aircel is planning to convert those Free Basic Internet users into 3G users.

PhoneRadar’s take

This is certainly a very encouraging initiative from Aircel because it focuses more on increasing the mobile internet usage that helps everyone access the Internet & stay connected. The only twist that is applied at the moment is that the users have to recharge a minimum of Rs 150 a month to ensure that they can continue with the Free Basic Internet service. With these kinds of initiatives, Aircel is soon going to see a hike in their revenues from data once the user adoption increases.

Let’s talk about the Ideal speeds required for accessing the well-known Internet services & Social Networks. If you are looking to access Facebook, the speeds would be very slow but you can eventually access it through 0.facebook.com or through Facebook Lite which reduces the media & offers you with the updates. These speeds are almost equivalent to the 2G connectivity speeds & hence you can at least connect to WhatsApp & send/receive messages.