India: Airtel.in GPRS mini-howto


If you ever happen to need GPRS “MoBoffice” data connection in India with Airtel.in, keep in mind that after activating your pre-paid SIM-card you should:

  1. Send an SMS message to 170 with text PLIVE
  2. Dial *148# (toll free).
  3. You will be presented a menu with 2 options: select 1, to activate Airtel Moboffice.
  4. After 1 hour you’ll receive nearly 6 SMS’s with details on howto configure your mobile.
  5. If you use a nokia770, make sure that the GPRS access point is airtelgprs.com and *not* airtelfun.com. Nokia 770 hacker edition has this outdated info by default and will not work out of the box :/

Airtel.in website is hugely undocumented on this aspect, I discovered this details (tricks?) by sending an email to Airtel.in support: [email protected] :S

And btw, the tariff at the moment is 30 paisa for each 50KB you use… 100 paisa is 1 rupee, so to check your email and post a text entry on your blog costs you about 1 to 2 rupees… really cheap indeed !