Airtel offers 50% data back for downloads from 3-5 am

Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom operator, will now offer 50 per cent data back for all in-app content downloads scheduled between 3am and 5am, it said in a statement. So if a customer schedules a video download of 100MB during the said time, he or she will get 50MB of data credited back to their account.

Under the 'Happy Hours' offer, Airtel will offer a 50 per cent discount on data charges between 3 am and 5 am. However, it could be difficult for users to stay awake during the said hours. In order to have downloads between 3 am and 5 am, one would need to schedule their content downloads, which is presently only available with certain apps.

''App users will benefit as they can schedule their non-urgent and heavy downloads without having to stay up and also benefit through 50 per cent saving on data,'' Airtel said. The developers can embed an API provided by the company to integrate schedule mechanism. Moreover, the developers will not have to pay Airtel for using this feature for their apps, it said.

According to reports, YouTube and Fastfilmz have already integrated the mechanism while other apps are yet to integrate it.