Bharti Airtel Reintroduces Rs 100 and Rs 500 Prepaid Talk Time Recharges

HIGHLIGHTS

• Bharti Airtel introduced minimum recharge scheme last year forcing customers to perform a recharge every 28 days
• The telco already offering Rs 10, Rs 1,000 and Rs 5,000 prepaid talk time plans

Back in October, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea completely removed talk time recharges from their portfolios thus giving a not so pleasant surprise to their subscribers. The consumers did not appreciate the move as many of them had purchased lifetime validity packs years ago and they were used to topping up their numbers through the talk time recharges. The main people who were affected by this move were the subscribers in rural regions who did not use bundled data and call offerings and just used talk time recharges for minimal calling usage. That was also the reason why the telcos might have started losing their subscribers. Now, to win back these consumers, Bharti Airtel has brought back talk time recharge plans of Rs 100 and Rs 500.

Talk Time Recharge Plans of Rs 100 and Rs 500 Make a Comeback

On taking a look at the recharge plans available in the My Airtel app, we found that Airtel has listed two talk time recharge plans which were previously removed. These recharge plans are of value Rs 100 and Rs 500. While the Rs 100 talk time recharge plan comes with Rs 81.75 talk time and 28 days validity, the Rs 500 recharge ships Rs 420.73 worth of talk time recharge along with the same 28 days validity. It is worth noting that when the telcos had removed the talk time recharges and introduced the minimum recharge packs starting with Rs 35, they had probably started losing out subscribers on a rapid scale. It is likely that Airtel decided to go back to square one to retain its subscribers who wanted to stick to talk time recharges instead of the bundled combo offerings and minimum recharge plans.

Newly Launched Long Validity Plans of Rs 998 and Rs 597 from Airtel Detailed

Bharti Airtel has also been ramping up its strategy against the competition by living up to the recent trend and introducing the high validity prepaid plans. Firstly, Bharti Airtel launched the Rs 1,699 prepaid plan which came with 365 days validity and then went open market. Soon after that, Bharti Airtel introduced the Rs 998 and Rs 597 prepaid plans which come with 336 and 168 days validity respectively. These options are good ones for subscribers who would like to recharge their numbers once and then forget about it.

The Rs 998 long term prepaid plan by Bharti Airtel offers 12GB data for the entire validity period along with 300 SMS per month benefit. The plan also provides unlimited free, STD, roaming and local calls. The validity of this plan is 336 days. The Rs 597 plan is valid for 168 days, and it provides 6GB of data for the entire validity period along with free unlimited local, STD and roaming calls. There is also the added benefit of 300 SMS per month.

Source - TT