Airtel customers are in for a bit of surprise as the carrier has announced that it will be rendering free access to the famous social networking site, Facebook. Sadly, the deal has a short shelf life and will be made available only for a limited period of time.
This isn’t the first time Airtel is providing access to Facebook without charging for it, in view of the fact that the service provider had pulled a similar stunt a few years back. The offer lasted for around two months and allowed all users to be socially active online without paying for the promotion.
As opposed to the previous promotion, this one does not include all customers falling under the carrier’s radar, but solely aims for those utilizing prepaid SIM cards. This means that every non-billing user who is a member of the site will be able to update statuses, upload images and videos, view pictures that peers have put up, message folks as well as comment and write on other members’ timeline for free.
The deal however comes with a catch. Users will able use the social network for free only for up to 500MB on a monthly basis. In cases when they may choose to visit external links, it won’t be counted as a part of the offer and they will be charged as per existing rates. Also, customers will bounce back to their prevailing scheme once they cross the stipulated free usage.
The carrier notably seems in favor of Facebook, seeing as it has already made the service accessible on USSD. This means that people can carry out some of the activities like reading News Feeds, managing Friend requests and so on, by just dialing *325# on their keypad, or *fbk# on QWERTY handsets. This does not require Internet or a data connection and the plan can be activated by shelling out Rs. 30 and will be valid for 20 days.
Moving on, free access to Facebook through Airtel has an expiry date just like all promotional plans. It has already kicked off and customers will be able to take pleasure in networking at no cost up until February 15, 2013.