Mumbai: If article published by web portal microfinancemonitor.com is to be believed, Remember the 4G girl who has gripped the TV viewers more than any cine actor for her convincing acts to say 4G of Airtel is real and true? Yes, those who could not download or watch the India-Pakistan cricket match decided to take her to the court for false advertisement while the social media is trolling her every minute.
Now the 4G girl, Sasha Chettri, has decided to quit Airtel and join Reliance Jio after admitting that her image was tarnished as Airtel failed to live up to its expectations as advertised.One Umiam Lake of Shillong has moved the court against her for not viewing the India vs West Indies World T20 Semi final clash on his mobile phone despite the promises made by her on Airtel 4G advertisements.
He said, “India has never lost whenever I watch the match. Due to this strange Airtel 4G girl’s advertisement, I took Airtel SIM, and then it was all blank. The match couldn’t be streamed, and I couldn’t watch the match and India lost. Sasha now must pay the price.”
Now that she has been dragged into legal battle, Sasha said in a Twitter interview, she said, “Paka daala yaar!” (Bugged me off dude!) Don’t these trolls have any other task?” But she failed to reason out why she went so far to defend Airtel 4G despite complaints that it hardly worked in many parts of the country, leave alone capturing livestreaming.
Though Airtel sheepishly admitted through another ad by her from the same location of Umiam Lake in Shillong where Sasha’s friends tell her:”Famous on TV, non-stop, loud speaker.” She replies,”Thoda over ho gaya… Glad we are here, 4G se bhi break, public se bhi break!”. Now that she realised the onus of over-advertisement on inadequate infrastructure of Airtel, she has decided to jump to Reliance Jio of India’s richest businessman Mukesh Ambani, who promised 80 times faster Internet connection.
Mukesh Ambani’s dream venture Reliance Jio 4G, which will be launched in April, according to some leaked reports, offers up to 75GB of data for Rs.200 and low cost voice plans for Rs.35 to Rs.37, way below its rivals. Coming to 4G plans of Reliance Jio is planning to offer 40GB data plans in the price range of Rs.700 to Rs.800 for the first three months, but it will change after. In comparison, Airtel offers 20GB under its 4G plan at a whopping Rs.3,000 per month and very often you may face lower bandwidth though usage-wise it is erratic.
The moment it reaches 80% of the bandwidth usage, the speed of Airtel falls down making it difficult to use again until you cough up more money say Rs.250 for 1GB for your dongle.
Reliance Jio owns pan-India 4G license for 2300MHz band, and claims over 1 lakh LTE base stations in India, covering more than 100,000 villages and 18,000 towns and cities. It is relying on BSNL and RCom’s networks for its voice services. In addition, it is building apps for cloud storage, music and video streaming to go with its 4G launch.
Apart from the price, two other parameters of 4G/LTE are speed – download speed and ‘time coverage’, which are very low in India. The present 4G download speed is around 10 Mbps and time coverage (the percentage of time for which a subscriber is connected to the LTE network) is just 50%, way below 30 MBPS and 97% time coverage in other countries. Reliance Jio is expected to fill this gap instead of relying on price war alone.
The question is that people who watched very high advertisement pitch of Sasha in Airtel but thoroughly disappointed may not buy her words again on Reliance Jio. Perhaps, Reliance should tweak her advertisements or select a new face to showcase their mettle. More than anything, Ambani should deliver what he has promised, that is, 80 times more powerful Internet connection in India.
…As published in microfinancemonitor.com
