India's largest telecom operator Bhart Airtel will be increasing prices for their data services across the country. In a call with analysts, former Airtel CFO Srikanth Balachandran revealed that the company would gradually look at increasing data prices "in a calibrated manner across the markets to suit adoption usage as well as profitability." In June, Airtel withdrew discounts it offered on online purchases of its mobile data for pre-paid customer packs and brought it on par with internet packs sold through offline retailers. For example, in the Mumbai circle, customers could buy 1GB of 3G data for Rs 249 whose validity period was30 days. This has been cut down to 1GB of mobile Internet for 28 days only, at a higher price of Rs 255. In 2G data packs, customers can now get the Rs 199 pack which gives 1.25GB for 28 days, as opposed to 2GB of 2G data for 30 days. Earlier this month, MediaNama had reported that Airtel had also reduced 3G data allowance and validity periods for prepaid customers. The Rs 100 recharge for 300MB of 3G data (varies between Rs 97-Rs 103, depending on provider), with a validity for 21 days, had been reduced to 250MB of data and a 10 day validity. One of the reasons for this could be the fact that data realizations at Airtel have been on a downward trend. Data realization refers to how much money a company makes from a megabyte or gigabyte of data. Answering an analyst question, Airtel managing director and CEO Gopal Vittal…
