Why was Airtel in such a rush to roll out its 4G services in Kolkata, given that it only has partial coverage? We don't see a reason as to why users would consider buying a 4G connection, firstly, due to the extremely high tariffs, secondly, the ridiculous data caps, and finally, the limited nature of the roll-out. Starting at a price of Rs 999, going upto Rs 1999, the service allows users to consume data in the range of 6GB to a maximum of 18 GB, after which speeds are capped at the ridiculously low transfer rates of 128 kbps. Speaking on a conference call following the launch, Airtel CEO, Sanjay Kapoor, justified the caps by saying that the bundle data was more than enough for average consumption and that the company would offer smart bytes packages on the line of its broadband offerings to users who want more bandwidth. - On data caps; positioning? When someone pointed out that the data caps would hamper content consumption and that watching a few high quality videos might gobble up tremendous amount of data, Kapoor came up with a rebuttal that world wide, wireless technologies are not used for heavy data consumption, and that if customers wanted to consume 100 GB of data, they should switch to fixed line. He also said that common web browsing tasks can easily be accomplished with 3G speeds. So we're not quite sure how Airtel plans to position 4G when it's not seamless for mobility (at least Airtel's…
