Free Facebook for Bharti Airtel users? what’s the catch ?

Bharti Airtel today announced that it will be offering Facebook for its 130 million mobile subscribers free of cost for next 2 months until August 31st 2010.

I am not sure why there is so much of noise about this whole thing, as Facebook had already announced this few months back itself. It is not Airtel, but Facebook’s initiative to have tie-ups with Mobile Operators in India and across the world.

In the blog post made in early May Facebook had announced that its stripped down version0.facebook.com will be available to mobile customers of over 50 mobile carriers (across the world) without incurring any data charges.

 

This is not really a surprising move, as most of the telecom operators are now looking at data services to not only attract customers, but also push data usage of mobile subscribers.

However, there is a small difference between Airtel’s offering and what Facebook had announced earlier. Facebook had announced its access to facebook through 0.facebook.com, a stripped down version where viewing / uploading of images would incur costs. Whereas, Airtel will offer free Facebook access through m.facebook.com which allows viewing / uploading images without incurring costs.

The catch however, is the limited period of 2 months – They want subscribers to get hooked on to full Facebook mobile experience. Airtel expects that after using it for couple of months, majority of subscribers would continue with it even with data charges. I see this as an excellent move by Airtel.

So if you are one of the Airtel users, go ahead and activate your free Facebook access on Airtel.

How to access Facebook on Airtel: 
• SMS ‘FACEBOOK’ to 54321 
• Feed your email address and password 
• Connect and share with your friends on the move – with no data cost on m.facebook.com until August 31st, 2010

However, if you are Tat DOCOMO customer, you are much better off – As they get full free access to Social Networking sites & chat (Twitter, facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and all Instant Messengers) through Buddynet feature.