Telecom

New Delhi: Telecom major Bharti Airtel, this midnight, launched the revolutionary iPhone 3G across six cities in the country. The phone will first be available in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore and later will be introduced in 65 other cities.

Priced at Rs 31,000 for 8GB and Rs 36,100 for 16GB of memory space, the iPhone will be available in all Airtel retail centres (ARCs) and Apple resellers. "Since apples cannot be compared to oranges, therefore, the price of the phone remains unquestionable," Sanjay Kapoor, Bharti Airtel president said on Thursday evening while briefing the media.

"Airtel has pre registered nearly 2,00,000 customers as the booking process had started about two months back," Kapoor said. "Until then, they were unaware of its price, but now when they know the price, the subscription figures might fluctuate. Also, we are collecting the entire price at one go," he added.

"We would also take care that our customers are served properly and the features are explained to them clearly. We have put in a lot of energy and effort to bring this out," said Kapoor. Our partnership with Apple is not there to make money but to build customer, he claimed.

The phone comes locked to the service provider, which means that a user cannot switch his or her operator while using an iPhone. However, the good news for the enthusiastic iphone users is that in airtel network, 500Mb data would be provided free for the first 12 months.