Airtel and Vodafone to bring 3G iPhone in India

Its Official.Airtel and Vodafone brings Apple 3G iPhone to India before this year end, most likely in October. Within hours Steve Jobs, cheif executive of Apple, made the announcement of 3G iPhone in WWDC, the two rival service providers, Airtel and Vodafone has announced that they are bringing the highly expected phone to India. But neither of them were ready to reveal any details on the price tag and exact launch date.

Vodafone is launching 3G iPhone in countries like Australia, Italy, New Zealand, and Portugal this July 11 and is set to launch countries like India, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, South Africa and Turkey before this year end. Likely Singpore telecommuncation , associate of Bharati Airtel, is launching in countries like India, Australia and Philipines later in the year.

Airtel unveils a toll free number, 54321, for the customers who wish to stay on the details and updates on the iPhone availability in India. Subscribers need to send a SMS ‘iPhone’ to 54321 to subscribe to the service. On the other hand, Vodafone announces that customers will be able to preregister online and retail stores to book for their piece in the next couple of days.

At the same time, Indian government is not decided on the 3G spectrum allocation and hence 3G network usage with the iPhone is most unlikely at the time of purchase. This unclear state on 3G availability is going to be the biggest headache for these service providers as their price tag all depends on it. Apple is providing iPhone at a well subsidized cost in US and is planning to make money from the service subscription cost with the deal with service providers across the world. For Instance, in US 8GB models will be available @ $199 while 16 GB model will be available @ $299. But the service is available only with AT&T, a popular service provider and customer has to signup a minimum $30/month worth Data plan for a commitment period of 2 years to get his phone. This is the same case everywhere. So in India, status of 3G availaibility should be clear in the next 1-2 months, so that Airtel and Vodafone will have the time to workout the subscription plan and launch the phone by October.

My initial guess is, both Airtel and Vodafone will bring 8 GB and 16 GB models in the range of Rs. 10,000 - Rs. 12,000 and Rs. 15,000 - Rs. 18,000 along with data plans in the range of Rs.400 (Limited bandwidth) to Rs.1,000 (unlimited bandwidth). Let us wait keeping the fingers crossed.