AirTel 3g — Blazing Fast — Yet Tears My Pockets!

Its February 15, and as I had mentioned in my previous post about my tour to Goa, I had subscribed to AirTel’s 3G plan that was worth ₹201 which gives a data plan for 250 MB. Since I was a bit busy in the tour last week, I didn’t get a chance to test the download speeds of the AirTel 3G network. Today, I had decided to test them out and I’ve used the popular speed testing website SpeedTest.net for benchmarking purposes. I’ve connected by Ike (Nokia 5800) to my workstation through the Nokia Ovi Suite 3 and it receives 90% of the 3G signal. The device uses HSDPA and it supports speeds upto 3.6 Mbps. I’ve benchmarked it with both Bluetooth and USB and got astounding results.

• For Bluetooth, download speed went upto 0.44 Mbps and upload speeds upto 0.19 Mbps
• For USB, download speed went upto 2.54 Mbps and upload speeds upto 0.33 Mbps

Here are the original benchmark results obtained from SpeedTest.net :

Although the data transfer speeds are mind-blowing, AirTel definitely tries to tear every Indian’s pocket with its inhuman data plans for experiencing the power of 3g. Last year, I was happy using BSNL 3g which had better 3g network coverage and affordable data plans, but AirTel certainly disappoints me after a year-long wait.