Make hay while the sun shines.

Since the inception of 3G service in Hyderabad I have been using 3G on my phone and when I want to browse on my laptop I tether my phone to it as a modem. I was using BSNL 3G and was pretty much happy with the quality and speed, they were the first to launch 3G here, and their data plans were nominally priced. Few months later Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone etc. followed, I was never bothered about it as I knew their prices will be complete rip-off  considering humongous money they paid to get 3G licenses. As I rightly guessed, I simply laughed at the data plans of Airtel which read '1.2Gb for 799Rs', I was getting four times the data they offered with lesser price with BSNL(6gb for 606Rs).

Since one fine day, not sure what happened, BSNL 3G speeds were dropping, on few occasions it wouldn't connect after all. Things went from bad to worse, even my Airtel GPRS was faster than BSNL 3G, I thought I've had enough with all this. I decided to bite the bullet and activated 3G on my Airtel SIM card, their data plans aren't economical but still I wanted to have 3G on my phone. After activation, I streamed a video on youtube to check the transfer speeds, data transfer speed was very good and higher than BSNL 3G. I was very much astounded to see that I wasn't charged for the data usage, instead my GPRS data balance reduced.

Long story short. If you have a 3G phone and if you are using Airtel GPRS for 98Rs, which gives 2Gb/month, you can consume that 2Gb data with 3G data transfer speed(100kb/s download speed minimum) by changing your mobile network mode to 3G only. Prior to doing this, you should activate 3G on your SIM by sending 3G to 121. You will receive a message saying "existing 2G data plan will be deactivated, send 1 as reply to confirm this" reply with '1' boldly, this doesn't work as it says, you will still have your GPRS data count intact(dial *123*10# to check data balance). This is not a hack or a trick to fool around the system this works out of the box and I'm using it without problems/threats of hefty bill. I guess there is some flaw in the way Airtel have implemented 3G for existing customers, unlike BSNL where you need to get a 3G sim card to have 3G services.

This is working flawlessly with Airtel pre-paid connection, Andhra Pradesh, not sure it is the same for post-paid. You pay for a GPRS plan and consume that data in 3G with higher transfer rates. When you go for vanilla Airtel 3G data plan you need to cough out 799Rs for paltry 1.2Gb data.

For one more time, I'll simplify things.

I have a 3G phone > I have a Airtel pre-paid SIM card, I've not activated 3G in it yet > I'm using GRPS, let it be any plan, say 2Gb for 98RS (very slow) here is what you've to do. Activate 3G by sending message 3G to 121 > let the 3G activation be done(read para 3 for more) > Change your mobile network mode to 3G/UMTS > start browsing at 3G speeds. Use Mobile Office as the access point.

Here are some screen shots from my E7 showing transfer speeds.

You/I don't know how this happening and do I dare to think that a company like Bharthi Airtel is so naive that they allow customers to use 3G for bargain prices? before they pull the plug out make full use of it. Now there is a GPRS data plan costing 251Rs(AP circle), giving you 8Gb for 3 months does it ring a bell?. What are you waiting for? go and recharge.

Please post your comments and clarifications. Thanks.