Jio effect: Airtel announces free calling and cloud backup

Honestly speaking as a consumer, it cannot get better than this. With Reliance Jio’s entry on the Indian telecom scene, every day seems to bring in new offers irrespective of the fact that you are a Jio user or not.

Jio has literally ushered in a period of tariff wars where every telco is offering either tariff cuts or new bonus packages to retain its user base. After BSNL’s 1+1 data offer, Airtel has announced one-time 50 minutes of free calls within Airtel network with a new version of its MyAirtel mobile application that also offers 2GB of cloud storage space for users.

"There are two new exciting apps from the Airtel stable - Airtel Cloud and Airtel Dialer. Airtel Cloud provides 2GB of free cloud storage and backup. Airtel Dialer offers 50 minutes of free Airtel-to-Airtel calling benefits, in addition to its call management feature," Airtel said in a statement.

Airtel Cloud lets users back up their audio, video, photos, documents, contacts, call history, and more. Notably, users won’t be charged for data consumed for uploading content to Airtel Cloud during night hours, the company said.

The free scheduled upload feature is currently only available for prepaid users, but will be made available for postpaid users "very soon", it added.

The new MyAirtel app that’s available on both Android and iOS also features Airtel Apps section that lists the "top apps" curated by the operator alongside its own apps in a single interface. This includes Ditto TV (with no subscription charges for Airtel users), Hike Messenger app, Wynk Music, Wynk Movies, Juggernaut, and Airtel Money.