When 3G first launched in India, it was the sole province of those with high-end smartphones.
Now, however, with a number of affordable 3G-compatible handsets on the market, it's become far more practical and accessible. Here, we take a look at the 3G services being offered by Airtel.
As with any mobile broadband product, the two key aspects are connectivity and performance.
Connectivity: Excellent. In a few places around Chennai, the signal did drop for a few seconds; but, it always reappeared quickly enough.
Moving around quickly (in a car or bus, for example) can adversely affect the signal strength, but not to the point of disconnection. Overall, the connectivity is a definite plus-point in Airtel's favour.
Performance: Once you use 3G to browse the Internet, you'll find it very hard to settle for anything else. Browsing was an absolute delight, and webpages loaded with barely any stutters. Flash-intensive pages did take a little time to load; that said, to put that into perspective, they still didn't take anywhere near as long as they would have on an EDGE/GPRS connection. Streaming high-definition videos on Youtube was also done with a minimum of fuss.
Final analysis: Airtel 3G handled everything we threw at it with ease, and should definitely be considered if you want a faster online experience on your mobile.
