Airtel launches Rs. 419 prepaid plan to take on Reliance Jio

Bharti Airtel has constantly been upgrading its prepaid recharge plans lineup in India since the introduction of Reliance Jio around two years back and now, it has launched the Airtel Rs. 419 prepaid plan in India in the long-term recharge category to take on Reliance Jio. The Airtel Rs. 419 prepaid plan will be available all over the country and the biggest highlight of the newly-launched plan is the fact that it comes with truly unlimited voice calls without any FUP limit.

For the unknown, Reliance Jio was once the only Indian teclo which was offering unlimited local, STD and roaming voice calls without any FUP limits while other companies were limiting the voice calling benefits to 250 minutes per day and 1000 minutes per week. However, considering the rise in popularity of truly unlimited calling benefits, Bharti Airtel has just decided to offer similar services to its users.

Coming back to the Airtel Rs. 419 prepaid plan, it comes with 1.4GB of daily 4G / 3G daily data (depending on the users), unlimited local, STD and roaming voice calls without any FUP limits, 100 SMS per day and a validity of 75 days. This makes for a total of 105GB of data for the whole validity period, which is on par with what Reliance Jio is offering.

Reliance Jio’s Rs. 349 prepaid plan offers 1.5GB of daily 4G / 3G daily data (depending on the users), unlimited local, STD and roaming voice calls without any FUP limits, 100 SMS per day and a validity of 70 days. Additionally, users also get a free subscription to all Jio suite of apps such as JioMusic, JioCinema and more.

Moreover, the Airtel Rs. 419 prepaid plan will also be competing with Vodafone’s Rs. 399 plan which comes with 1.4GB of daily 4G / 3G daily data (depending on the users), unlimited local, STD and roaming voice calls, 100 SMS per day and a validity of 70 days. However, the voice calling benefit is limited to 250 minutes per day and 1000 minutes per week as part of the FUP limit.

That being said, it seems to be confused or rather desperate decision from Bharti Airtel as it already had the Rs. 399 prepaid plan in the long-term validity segment which offers 1.4GB of daily 4G / 3G daily data (depending on the users), unlimited local, STD and roaming voice calls, 100 SMS per day and a validity of 70 days. However, the same plan is offered as a segmented one to select users with 84 days of validity.

How Airtel plans to position the new Rs. 419 prepaid plan is a tad bit confusing as the Indian teclo is asking for Rs. 20 more in order to give 5 days more as part of the validity. That said, if you take the per day cost of both Airtel’s Rs. 419 and Rs. 399 prepaid plans, then the newly-launched recharge pack seems more affordable.