I have been using Airtel's 3G services in Pune for a couple of days now. Here are the first impressions.

• availability/coverage is spotty. For example, it will work near Aurora Towers but not work near the GPO. Which is very odd
• coupled with the spotty coverage is the fact that it mostly requires you to be near some window etc to get it working. As an example, if you are sitting near one of the Moledina Road facing windows at the Dorabjees Coffee Shop it will work, try it near the yoghurt section on the first floor and be prepared to be disappointed
• most folks say that 3G causes battery drain, I haven't noticed anything unusual
• however, it does take a longer time for network/data signal to align itself (bars on the phone). It could be that the network infrastructure itself is facing issues, but an example could be parking at the ground floor at Mariplex, losing cell signals, coming up till the KFC/Juice Bar and then waiting for close to half a minute before I get signals. Nothing of significance has changed in the phone in terms of firmwire or, application stack. So, it is a curious experience. You can repeat this if you park at Dorabjees and come up.
• I am noticing more signal drops than before. Again, the network might be congested.
• It takes some time, sometimes connecting and disconnecting twice to get on to the 3G network and actually send/receive data. Else you can see that data is being sent, but nothing is coming down the pipe.

Runa is still on the 2G plan. And, she doesn't seem to have the above issues. So, it makes it even more unusual.

On a side note, call drops on the network seems to have increased.