Idea Cellular, which has been under pressure in recent months due to aggressive offerings from rivals Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, has unveiled a new promotional offer that gives 1 GB per day for 28 days at a price of around Rs 250.
Unlike other plans, this one does not offer any voice benefits.
But for those looking for data only, the Idea plan makes for a value-for-money offer. Like most other plans from the operator, it is valid on 3G as well.
Despite being cheap by Idea standards, the Rs 250 pack — which is available under ‘offers for you’ section — is not the cheapest such deal in the market.
That distinction goes to Reliance Jio’s Rs 399 plan, which gives 84 GB and unlimited voice calls.
In other words, while Idea charges about Rs 8.93 per GB under its scheme, Jio is charging only Rs 4.75 per GB, besides offering free calls.
However, the key distinction is that you need a 4G handset to take advantage of the Reliance offer, while you can make do with a 3G device for Idea’s deal.
The Aditya Birla Group company has been experimenting with various 4G offers to see consumer response to each one.
For example, two months ago, it was offering 84 GB for Rs 400, in line with Jio’s scheme. Last month, the price for the 84-day scheme was increased to about Rs 500.
At present, the 84-day scheme is no longer appearing in the ‘Deals for You’ section at all.
Besides this, last month the company was also offering a 126 GB plan with validity of 84 days. The pack, which was priced at around Rs 700, entitled a user to 1.5 GB per day of high-speed data usage.
Idea, despite reportedly having a bigger 4G network than Vodafone, has been losing customers in recent months. It lost 23 lakh users in July and 28 lakh in August.
The company recently said it was gearing up to increase average data consumption on its network from around 2.2 GB at present to 15 GB per user per month next year.