Hi
I am Tilak from Aligarh ,Uttar Pradesh. I have been using Airtel network for past nine years. So far i am very satisfied with Airtel. As you know Airtel was the first ever private network launched in india,so it's obvious that they have excellent wide network coverage all over india including small villages. I would summarize my experiannce point wise.
1. Cost: If you consider cost of plan for both call and internet its slightly costly but its worth it,as I never had call drop or disconnection problem. To compete with Jio airtel offered very lucrative plan for a short time,but now the rates have gone up. I usually recharge with Rs 244 plan which give me 3g/4g for 70 days and airtel to airtel call free for the same time period.
2. Call quality: Quality of call is excellent throughout,even at remote villages, i have witnessed people having no service at remote places but airtel surprises me as i am always connected to network. Although voice quality sometimes drops at far away remote villages.
3. Network Coverage: As i have already mentioned,airtel bieng oldest network provider in india has improved there network capability to all over india over a period of time. This is the prime reason why people are willing to pay a little more for Airtel, They get wide network coverage all over india. Roaming charges for airtel is slightly more than other networks but its worth it.
4.Data Limit: Airtel provide daily cap of 1 Gb/day of 3g/4g data after which speed significantly goes down,but still maneageble . 1 Gb data is enough for everyday use ,if you are not going for heavy downloading.
5. Data Speed: As far as data speed is concerned airtel network frequently keep jumping from 4G to 3G,(which is common with other networks as well)but provides decent speed. Very rarely speed goes down drastically but it seems like whenever you start downloading big files,airtel delibratly decreases the speed. After 11 Pm speed is amazing,it goes upto 2 MB/s.
6.Customer Service: Airtel falls short in this department. It seems like thier customer service consist of IVR options,most of which are useless. IVR is very confusing and it seems like airtel delibratly dont want you to talk to rep. You can only talk to rep if you can get past highly irritating and frustrating IVR.
So comparing with other networks i would say its slightly costly but worth it. Other networks like Idea is quite cheap but do not provide service quality as airtel does.