Airtel will now be selling the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G smartphone with its own postpaid plans including 4G data starting Thursday. Until now, the smartphone was available exclusively via e-commerce website Flipkart. An Airtel representative had earlier told NDTV Gadgets that the units being sold via the telecom operator will not be locked to the Airtel network, just like the ones available via Flipkart.
The Airtel-Xiaomi collaboration will let users buy Redmi Note 4G handset at Rs. 9,999 from 133 Airtel stores across six cities - Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, and Kolkata. Users will be able to book the handset from Airtel's dedicated Mi page and select their preferred Airtel store in the aforementioned cities where they wish to pick up the device. While the booking process has already started, the sales will commence from Friday. Users can book online via Credit Card, Debit Card or Cash payment method, the company said.
Airtel added that it will keep a 'Mi Day' each week where users can walk-in and buy a Redmi Note 4G without any pre-booking from the selected Airtel stores.
The telecom giant has also made it mandatory for prepaid Airtel customers and non-Airtel customers to first opt for Airtel's postpaid myPlan before buying the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G. Airtel postpaid users with at least 500MB of 3G data activation can buy the smartphone without opting for any other data plans.
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G users in the above mentioned six cities will be upgraded from 3G to 4G networks, as and when 4G services are rolled out. The upgrade to 4G will happen at the same tariff as their 3G data packs.
Airtel postpaid users in Bengaluru, where Airtel already has a 4G network, can get up to 10GB free 4G data by logging on to company's Airtel Live website via their Redmi Note 4G smartphones
