Any recent advice on the best SIM card brand(s) for reliable and decent data speed service for individuals traveling in the Golden Triangle and Varanasi region of India? Airtel and Vodafone? One tend to be much more affordable or more streamlined with foreigners at DEL airport for fast processing time/activation? Are all vendors AFTER immigration or are some within T3 prior to immigration?

i use airtel & am very satisfied with the network....

jio is another option that is cheap & reliable....

The guys at the airport know how to handle foreigners application. Airtel is very aggressive on prepaid nowadays and offers massive 1GB/day for nearly no money. Which leads to their network being overloaded though... jio is only LTE and rather nice.

I've used Vodafone and have been satisfied with their service (Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Jaipur and other parts of Rajasthan, Ahmedabad, Mysore, some rural parts of Karnataka...). No personal experience with Agra or Varanasi, I'm afraid.

I'll add that the only operator about whom I have heard negative comments is BSNL - they appear not to be at all competitive in their pricing, and there are reports that roaming within India is sometimes problematic with them.

Thanks for the advice about Airtel. I am unsure if Jio has sufficient coverage across my area of travel if only LTE. Wouldn't that be limiting? Typically, despite LTE increasing battery life and providing higher speeds, I find it often doesn't work as well in "weak signal" areas, unlike 3G services, which may continue to maintain a steady connection even if slower. Wouldn't there be lots of gaps in coverage with Jio as a result outside the main cities or in weak signal areas, if totally dependent on LTE service?

As for LTE, do Airtel and Vodafone have about the same level of LTE coverage?

If that is the case about Jio (see above) and it is back to choosing between Vodafone and Airtel, is it felt Airtel's network is overtaxed more so than Vodafone with Vodafone having fewer low performance/reliability issues across a wide geographical area (since less popular and less overused than Airtel's towers I assume)?

What has your experience been with Jio outside Delhi in the areas I mentioned? Do you feel Airtel's network is overtaxed based on your travels in that region of India based on recent experience? Thanks

airtel has pretty decent coverage in all the regions you mentioned....so does jio....you can't go wrong with either....

Does Jio allow foreigners who do not have an Aadhar card to get a SIM and have pre-paid access for a limited time?

You can use Trabug's Facility. It has a v.good network signal. Jio is also good, but might lead to network problems at times.

I'm in the south, and recently bought that Rp 199 bundle from an Airtel office. It's a stunning deal: for four weeks you get 1.4GB/day of data, unlimited calls to all India, and 100SMS/day.

They only needed a passport copy and a photo and somehow took care of all the other information on the form. Total cost was Rp 250, including the SIM card.

4G seems to work fine, with no slowdown I can see.

Yes, I saw a newspaper story the other day saying the authorities were about to attack predatory pricing by telecoms operators.

It was right next to another story about Aircel filing for bankruptcy.

Wireline service has predatory pricing? It sure seems mobile pricing is very competitive based on the low prices I observed while there.

The story was talking about mobile telecoms operators.