YouTube has tied up with telecom operator Tata Docomo to introduce the first-of-its-kind online video streaming plan in India. You must be thinking that such plans already exist in our country where people pay a subscription fees and get access to unlimited videos. Well, do these videos happen to be from YouTube? The answer is ‘No’. You still need to pay for data charges (if you are connecting via mobile internet) for videos you watch!
Prepaid users can now avail a new recharge pack, aptly titled ‘YouTube Recharge’, for as little as Rs. 9. For the said amount, users get 100 MB of video surfing on YouTube and Apalya Technologies’ Live TV service. The pack expires in 24 hours. Fret not, for there are higher rung plans as well. Rs. 19 gets you 150 MB of access for a period of 3 days, whereas Rs. 39 takes the time period to one week and the free data usage to 300 MB.
If you compare these plans to a regular 3G pack, you will quickly come to the conclusion that Tata Docomo is offering a much more VFM (value for money) recharge pack here. Rs. 100 gets you 300 MB of 3G data, whereas here you get 300 MB worth of YouTube videos and Live TV streaming for less than half the price (Rs. 39).
YouTube’s Director of Content Partnerships and Operations, Asia Pacific, says ”This is part of our efforts to make video content more affordable to a large base of mobile Internet users in the country. This is the first of its kind partnership in India.”
Anand Agrawal, Tata Docomo Head of Data and Mobile VAS, says that offering cheap plans for accessing online videos will enable more and more users to access the same. As per reports, 3.7 billion videos are watched online every month in India. This figure is expected to bloat up quickly with the introduction of such plans, especially if other Indian telecom operators such as Airtel, Vodafone also jump in with their own similar ‘Youtube Recharge’ packs
Lastly, if in case you are wondering how long that 100 MB of data is going to last, the Rs. 9 you spend will get you access to 240p content for around 20-30 minutes. While the numbers seem low, most people only use their phones to watch short, viral or funny videos while on-the-go. Perhaps Tata Docomo and other Indian operators will also introduce similar plans for other services such as Vine and instagram in the near future.
Basic math question: How come 39 is one fifth of 100?
“Rs. 100 gets you 300 MB of 3G data, whereas here you get 300 MB worth of YouTube videos and Live TV streaming for less than one-fifth the price (Rs. 39).”
That was a mistake, getting it corrected..