India leading telecom service provider, Airtel has reduced the price for some of the third-generation (3G) mobile data plans by as much as 70 per cent putting pressure on other companies in the sector to follow suit in order to avoid losing customers in the fierily competitive market.

The move is to boost the uptake of the 3G service in the country, which remains low despite the fact that there are as many as 900 million mobile phone users in the country. According to estimates, only about 12 million users in the country are linked to the faster 3G net work.

This is the first time a telecom operator has reduced the prices for service in as many as three years in the telecom market, which has seen a large scale scandal, subsequent cancellation of tainted telecom licenses by the supreme court and cut throat competition.

"With Airtel 3G Smartbytes, postpaid mobile customers will now be able to continue enjoying uninterrupted access to high speed browsing on their mobile devices even after exhausting their monthly data limits," the company said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Country's largest phone carrier and other players have shelled out as much as 385.43 billion rupees for acquiring fourth-generation (4G) wireless broadband spectrum from the government in an auction that was organized in 2010.

Bharti was successful in winning 4G spectrum in four of the country's 22 telecoms zones in the auction. The company paid 33.14 billion rupees for spectrum in the Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kolkata and Punjab zones.

The company will launch its 4G LTE (long term evolution) network, which offers high speed wireless broadbrand service with high upload and download speeds to the customers. The company will be able to offer high speed internet services on the network like high definition video streaming and instant photo and video downloads.