PANAJI: Tourists visiting Goa, especially the international tourists, will now be able to take advantage of an innovative product from Bharati Airtel, which will allow them to stay connected with friends and family back home at affordable rates.
Addressing a press conference in the city on Wednesday, the chief operating officer (Mobility) of Bharati Airtel Ltd for Mumbai as well as Maharashtra and Goa circle, Mr Anant Arora said that the international tourist plan of the company offers a Tourist Pack to the visitors arriving in India, from countries like Russia, China, United Kingdom, USA, Gulf and countries of the erstwhile USSR.
"Priced at Rs 400 with a talk time worth Rs 360, the Tourist Pack offers all local and STD calls at 1 paisa per second with 30 ISD SMS free," Mr Arora said, adding that in the past, international tourists preferred to make calls as international callers, while now they opt for using local SIM card to make calls. He also stated that the Tourist Pack introduced by Airtel is focused around international tourists, though it can be used by the domestic tourists as well, and further valid for a period of 40 to 50 days. "For national roaming, customers calling another Airtel number will be charged 60 paise per minute for outgoing as well as incoming calls, whereas calls made on non-Airtel number will be charged 80 paise per minute,"
Mr Arora stated.
, pointing out that with a view to give international callers maximum benefits, call rates have been significantly slashed for the abovementioned countries. "All the existing services of Airtel can be accessed by users of this Tourist Pack," he added
Observing that mobile service business is ‘line of site’ business, Mr Arora acknowledged that there is a challenge as far as radio frequency planning goes. He added that though there are 198 towers and in-built solutions (IBS) for Airtel service in Goa, more infrastructure is needed to expand the network.
Maintaining that there is a lot of hype as regards 3G/ Broadband Wireless Access technology, Mr Arora said that the future of the same depends on the requirement of information as well as amount of customers using the same.
