Much awaited Airtel 3G services are finally launched in Karnataka and is scheduled to get rolled-out in all 13 telecom-circles it has won licenses for by March 2011. We got an exclusive peak inside Airtel 3G services and were even succeeded in accessing Airtel 3G Portal while in testing. The service is now officially launched and tariff announced, with comparison to BSNL 3G offering I am not excited with Airtel's 3G rate-card as posted ahead.

The fifth largest telecom operator in the world and the largest cellular service provider in India Airtel is getting ready to launch it's 3G services in India, the official website of Airtel is updated introduction to 3G but others details are still under construction. We managed to sneak around these under-construction pages revealing details about Airtel 3G data plans and even managed to get the service activated (without an working 3G service as the service is still to be launched) allowing us to access Airtel 3G Portal Homepage which should not be available to public until launch.

You can find the first-ever EXCLUSIVE images of Airtel 3G Portal after the jump.

Adding another negative to their no so great service Indian telecom operator Airtel is now charging 50 Paisa Per 3 minute for all calls made to their Customer Care Helpline Number 121 for any time spent with an Customer Care Agent, the good thing is that have cared enough to offer a separate toll-free number 198 to register complaints without any charges.

It is ironical to see how Airtel is spending large sums of money on advertisements promoting their schemes and services but will be charging the customer for providing the same information (about their services like addons, plans etc.) via their customer-care helpline.

Nobody likes to listen support service touch-tone menus when trying to reach call-center support executive, luckily if you are in USA or Canada free deep-dialing service Fonolo takes the pain out of lengthy and boring phone-menu navigation automating the whole process letting you reach the desired option fast, but if you are in other countries here is a simple trick which will let you dial directly to the desired location in IVR system and reach the support executive.

Reliance recently launched their BIGTV DTH service providing another competitive option to Indian TV subscribers, now Indian telecom major Airtel has also came up with their own direct-to-home (DTH) service dubbed - 'Digital TV' making it the sixth DTH service provider in India after Dish TV, Tata Sky, Sun Direct, DD Direct Plus and Reliance Big TV, initially the service will be available in 62 towns across the country offering 175 channels.

One the most interesting feature of Airtel Digital TV is the inclusion of programmable universal remote allowing users to manage TV and Set-top Box with a single remote, the service uses superior MPEG4 standard with DVB S2 technology making it HD ready like Big TV.

In an interview given to Indiatimes, Airtel's IT director Jai Menon claimed that the Airtel version of the iPhone 3G is hacker-proof and even the most talented hackers on the planet won’t be able to crack the iPhone’s Airtel applications with other SIMs.

Airtel claimed that even if a hacker manages to get another provider's SIM card to work with on Airtel iPhone 3G, they would still be locked out of Airtel-specific applications like Airtel Live and mCheck, With no access to Airtel Live they wont be able to access any text, audio, video, static images, music or gaming options available on the preloaded Airtel Live portal.

It's very surprising to see Airtel locking their iPhone's even when Indian customers are paying Rs. 31,000/- (~ US$715) and a fully working unlocked iPhone (non 3G for now) from grey market is easily available under Rs. 24000/-, being a Airtel customer myself, I would suggest Airtel and their tech team to invest more efforts in improving the quality of their service instead of making such non-worthy statements as nobody is going to put efforts in cracking this pricey iPhone just for using Airtel Live.