The Indian telecommunication industry continues to see fierce battles among the top players. With new offers and schemes available to prepaid users from telcos, consumers are making the most of the situation. While Reliance Jio and Airtel have stepped up their game significantly, state-run BSNL is showing its competence.
BSNL has been launching new prepaid plans and bundles with unlimited calls and data to lure users. The telco once again launched two new prepaid plans priced at Rs 99 and Rs 319. The biggest USP of the new plans is that they offer unlimited calling benefits to prepaid users.
TelecomTalk reported that the newly-launched prepaid plans are available across India, except in Mumbai and Delhi. It's not clear why the telco refrained from launching these unlimited calling plans in these two circles, but users are not completely out of options there as BSNL offers other tariffs.
Now speaking about the plans themselves, BSNL's Rs 99 and Rs 319 tariffs only offer unlimited voice calls to any network without any FUP limit. The Rs 99 plan comes with a validity of 26 days along with free caller tune service, while the Rs 319 gets truly unlimited calls for 90 days from the time of recharge.
As tempting as these new plans sound, the competition is tough. Airtel and Reliance Jio have similar tariff plans, but they give additional benefits such as free data along with free voice calling. Reliance Jio has Rs 98 plan that gives 2GB data, unlimited calls for 28 days and Airtel offers 1GB data with 28 days validity for Rs 99 but has bundles starting at Rs 199.
But it's unfair to judge BSNL's competence based on these new plans as the telco has recently introduced series of plans to stay in the game. For instance, the telco launched an IPL special recharge pack for Rs 248 that gives users 153GB data for 51 days, Rs 444 plan with 1.5GB data per day and unlimited calls for 60 days and Rs 485 pack to give users 1GB data per day and unlimited calls for 90 days.
For low-cost bundles, BSNL offers Rs 187 prepaid plan to users that gives them unlimited calls and 1GB data per day for 28 days. Unlike its competitors, the data offered in this plan is in 3G speeds.
BSNL stepped up its game to compete with its rivals Jio and Airtel by rolling out 4G LTE services. The telco has also partnered with local smartphone manufacturers such as Micromax and Lava, to offer affordable smartphones to users as it tries to counter JioPhone's popular and Airtel's "Mera Pehla Smartphone" scheme's success.
