Visiting India and totally confused

[raymondbower]

Hello Friends
I am Raymond and I am visiting India for a few months for business, for the very first time. I have an unlocked iPhone 4S which I want to use. I had an associate of mine purchase a 4G Micro SIM card for it and got a number for it. I will go to India next Monday.
I am trying to choose a plan and I am completely confused after reading Airtel website.
I would really appreciate if someone here can help me out.
1. What I understand is that Airtel supports 4G speeds only with iPhone 5 and above. So, will this 4G Micro SIM even work with my iPhone 4S?
2. When I choose a plan, should I get a 3G plan or a 4G plan?
3. On Airtel website, I see two plans: mobile and data. I have a postpaid number - and there are various plans which require you to choose 'Mypacks'. And there are data plans for iPhone. What plan should I choose so I have both vice and data? Here in US, the plans are combined and they offer you to select minutes, texts and internet data together. I was not sure how it works for Airtel
Can anyone help me out? Thanks

 

[mhsabir]

a) 4G on iPhone is currently available only in Bangalore, Chandigarh, Mohali, Panchkula, Ludhiana & Jalandhar.
b ) AFAIK iphone 4s does not have LTE capabilities?
c) Phone should support 4g sim as I believe its a common SIM
Source : http://www.airtel.in/forme/wireless-internet/4g_lte/4g_lte_faqs/4g_faqs
d)You should be able to choose a custom plan with voice & data
http://www.airtel.in/mobile/postpaid/tariffs/

 

[amish]

If you are going to roam around India. Best is to go for 3G plan as 4G plans would mostly be useless and expensive.

 

[ghpk]

A Great way to explore India on a Shitty network called "AIRTEL"
your phone expense can be higher than your Trip Expenses.

My father who has a Delhi Airtel SIM and is on roaming these days is so fed up with Airtel, its a pre-paid number and Airtel has done so many drama with
the service.
Currently in Maharashtra circle, Most of the time, Number is not reachable, works for sometime during late evenings,
The free roaming pack is a Joke, they won't make your calls thru, and you would look like a rotten tomato to your important callers cause you are
mostly unreachable, even if it connects, you would hardly be able to hear the other party.
His Balance gets deducted every few minutes, he's not sure if Airtel is deducting money for each sms/missed call alert they are sending.
he's so fedup that he wants to fly to Delhi and place a port request immediately, but due to health issues and his age he cannot take this pain.
3G Pack hardly fetches mail, and so are the Apps keeping him disconnected.
I don't know if you need to be a special born person to be able to use Airtel without a glitch. I wonder how people afford this network.
for me, its like getting the curse on your pocket if you are on Airtel.
Calling customer care starts diagnose from ABCD, are you sure you have blah blah phone settings, Seriously your customer care guys are
as qualified as CON ARTIST, they test your patience and fool customers.

Its a SHAME on Airtel to harass a senior citizen who's already having so many issues with his health and you guys can't even
provide a seamless connectivity for voice and data to him but you can deduct his balance every few mins.
Coming back to topic:
You are coming to India and opting for a Network Mode which is hardly present in few cities, even in those cities I am sure its only center of the
city which would serve 4G, so Watch out and don't take the pains of surviving on the signals which are still in infant stage.
Go for 3G plan, and if you want to be safe and connected 24x7, I would recommend you to have another phone at your disposal which is on other network.
even a 15$ phone would work fine on any network from Metro to Village but had it been me I'll not trust Airtel to be only option while on a foreign land.

 

[amish]

@ghpk
From explanation of your issues, sound like virus in phone. Which may be jamming internet, jamming network and sending background SMS.
Have you tried putting SIM in some other phone?
As I havent seen those problems in Maharashtra Airtel network.

 

[ghpk]

yes tried on another phone too.
There's no outgoing message done, and still balance is reduced many times a day.
While no such problem when inserting a Roaming Vodafone SIM, so credit goes to Airtel for the exclusive fun on the move.

 

---

[igloo]

Which place u visited in maharashtra?
Airtel got 1800band there i'll recommend idea n voda.

To op also, which all places you are planning to visit here?

 

[ghpk]

Problematic place is Vashi.
Voda is working fine there, however, he being a famous person he's not comfortable with sharing his Voda number with public.
his primary 10 yr. old number was last year ported from Tata to Airtel and the fun started in his life since then.

 

[v1rus]

Hello Friends
I am Raymond and I am visiting India for a few months for business, for the very first time.

Welcome and hope you enjoy your trip

 

[shashankre]

Raymond, since you are from US, you need to understand that when operators here say 4G, they really mean it, they mean its LTE unlike in US where high speed 3G is called 4G!!
And don't bother listening to people who crib about Airtel network. Its a weird thing but everyone across the world hates their current operator but still continues to use them! You can blindly trust Airtel and Vodafone; they have coverage even in places where there is no electricity. You get the point!
If you are going to visit Bangalore and couple of other places that were mentioned in one of the previous post, you can go with the Airtel 4G (LTE), if you have iPhone 5 WITH LTE BAND 40 (2.1Ghz)
Also, prepaid (something like At&t GoPhone) is more popular here than US and I suggest you to stick to prepaid as they are easy to manage and often cheaper than postpaid!