I walked into a airtel store in Nandidurga road, R.T.Nagar and filled out an application form that required a passport photo. No address proof required as they would request for a local person who can attest for you. They would provide a SIM card for postpaid connection and said it would activate in 4 hours. They also did an instant verification with the local contact you provided. The person also said that they would provide frequent updates to the alternate number I had provided.
While the process was simple, some of the claims were untrue. There were a couple of additional steps which I was not aware.
First: There was a televerification process I had to go through. I had to call an airtel number from my alternate number to complete the televerification process.
Second: The 4 hour activation claim was untrue.
Third: An airtel person appeared on my door that evening to verify me in person and took my photograph as a proof along with my employer details.
Fourth: The activation happened after 48 hours. The internet connection was spotty and inconsistent for the first day after activation.
I had purchased a 10GB monthly plan for 999 Rs but playing youtube for halfday consumed 50% of my data plan in a day. So I'm now limited to only using my dataplan for browsing purposes.
The customer care was not very helpful during the activation process as the automated voice would always tell me postpaid number was invalid. More over there does not seem to be an option to talk to a real person.
I also read that I can top up my dataplan using smartbytes http://www.airtel.in/forme/home/smartbytes
You can also check your data usage by logging on to your airtel account at airtel.in by providing your phone number and supplying the OTP that would be sent to your alternate number. Lot of lessons learnt with this experience at Airtel, India.
I had some connectivity issues with my internet 4G connection where it would time out every couple of minutes or so. I suspected the hotspot device and the SIM card initially. Later after testing the hotspot and SIM card in different areas in bangalore, figured the connection near my house was spotty. Now airtel has a bigger problem to figure out and I have to live with this problem until Airtel fixes it.
While the process was simple, some of the claims were untrue. There were a couple of additional steps which I was not aware.
First: There was a televerification process I had to go through. I had to call an airtel number from my alternate number to complete the televerification process.
Second: The 4 hour activation claim was untrue.
Third: An airtel person appeared on my door that evening to verify me in person and took my photograph as a proof along with my employer details.
Fourth: The activation happened after 48 hours. The internet connection was spotty and inconsistent for the first day after activation.
I had purchased a 10GB monthly plan for 999 Rs but playing youtube for halfday consumed 50% of my data plan in a day. So I'm now limited to only using my dataplan for browsing purposes.
The customer care was not very helpful during the activation process as the automated voice would always tell me postpaid number was invalid. More over there does not seem to be an option to talk to a real person.
I also read that I can top up my dataplan using smartbytes http://www.airtel.in/forme/home/smartbytes
You can also check your data usage by logging on to your airtel account at airtel.in by providing your phone number and supplying the OTP that would be sent to your alternate number. Lot of lessons learnt with this experience at Airtel, India.
I had some connectivity issues with my internet 4G connection where it would time out every couple of minutes or so. I suspected the hotspot device and the SIM card initially. Later after testing the hotspot and SIM card in different areas in bangalore, figured the connection near my house was spotty. Now airtel has a bigger problem to figure out and I have to live with this problem until Airtel fixes it.
