India’s Reliance Communications (RCom) has followed Bharti Airtel’s lead and reduced prices of its mobile data services – offering what it says is “true unlimited” plans for INR999 ($16).

Airtel announced earlier in the week it was cutting prices of its 4G services to INR999 with a 10Gb data cap. The 4G price, offered in 15 cities, is lower than a comparable 3G data plan, which is priced at INR1,499.

The reductions are seen as a defence against the upcoming nationwide rollout of 4G services next year by Reliance Jio Infocomm, which is the only operator to have a 4G licence in all 22 of the country’s regions.

RCom has upgraded it CDMA network, which it says now has a peak download speed of 14.7Mb/s, in five cities, including Chennai and Bangalore, and will add Delhi and Mumbai soon.

RCom is the country’s third largest mobile player with 108 million connections, 18 per cent of which are 3G. Its overall ARPU is 44 per cent lower than Airtel’s, which is $2.90.

Anil Ambani runs RCom while Jio, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, is controlled by Anil’s older brother Mukesh Ambani.

The latest round of price cuts comes just a month after Airtel posted its highest quarterly profit in three years – a signal that the hyper-competitive Indian market is finally turning around.

India’s largest operator, with 212 million connections, has just 269,000 4G customers and 3G connections make up only 7 per cent of its total user base, according to GSMA Intelligence.