My parents will be in India for a couple weeks in January. They are going to be in Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bhubaneswar, and possibly one of the national parks near Kolkata or Bhubaneswar. I have an old unlocked dual-band GSM phone they can borrow that should work in India. If it means better reliability, though, they'd probably be willing to rent/buy a phone.

From reading the various threads on Thorntree, it sounds like Airtel's sim cards come most highly recommended. Will Airtel work reliably in all three cities? How is Airtel's in rural areas? I've never been to India, but my experience living in China was that China Mobile worked almost everywhere I went (which included some pretty bumble#%@ places--and that was 3 years ago). Does India have near-universal GSM coverage like that?

I've told them that the best value in most countries is to wait until you get there and buy a SIM card from any old cellphone shop on the street (which I've done in Hong Kong and Spain). But they're willing to pay a bit more to have their phone number ahead of time.

Are there any US-based companies that sell Airtel sim cards so my parents can know (and distribute) their phone number before they depart? I've found a couple places that sell Orange prepaid cards (telestial.com, etc.), but it sounds like Orange cards can't be easily recharged outside of Mumbai, which is no good since they'll be leaving Mumbai after a couple days and spending most of their time elsewhere. I also found a travel agency via google who can arrange for SIM pickup at DEL airport and fax the phone number to us in the US first, but my parents are flying into BOM, so that doesn't help either.

Also, how bad of a rip-off are the cellphone shops in the BOM airport? If they just want a SIM card, will it be significantly more expensive than buying it from a shop in town? Are the BOM airport shops open around 11:30pm when the flights from the west arrive?

Thanks!

These are the same questions I wanted to ask, so let me add my queries...
I'm probably going to New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, what are the coverage available outside Delhi? I have an unlocked GSM 9/1800 phone, is there one carrier providing a prepaid sim card for all these regions? I have roaming contracts but incoming calls are very expensive so looking for cheaper arrangements. Thanks for your help.

What cellphone shops in the BOM airport? :D

Just get the sim card when you're in town. Plenty of shops selling these cards. Any dual-band (900/1800) phone will work fine, so you don't need to buy a new one.

I can only speak for Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore and Mangalore and areas close to that - Airtel has much better coverage than BPL Mobile and Idea Cellular in those areas. It works pretty much everywhere including rural areas although I've had a couple of calls drop while driving along highways. The nationwide roaming is pretty good as well, although customer service while roaming can be a problem (their 121 customer service number is still localised - ie. If you buy the card in Mumbai and if you call 121 while roaming in Kolkata, the Kolkata customer service may not be able to help you with certain billing issues which are stored on the local Mumbai servers. Make sure you get the 10-digit customer service number for the location that you buy the card from - this number will not be toll-free).

Some more information here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=283291&highlight=airtel

No shops in BOM airport, huh? Nevermind.

Thanks for the link. Didn't think to search the travel tech forum.

I guess I'll let my folks know that just buying an Airtel card is probably the cheapest/easiest thing to do. I'm just trying to keep them from blowing a ton of money on a rented phone with a phone number that's not even in India.