BSNL today introduced a new postpaid plan of Rs 399 to stay in-line with private telecom operators postpaid plans. And the new Rs 399 plan offers better benefits than other operators, especially the data benefit is 50% better than what others are offering. The new Rs 399 BSNL postpaid plan is dubbed as Ghar Wapsi and will be effective from March 1, 2018. All the top telcos Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular are offering the similar price postpaid plans.
BSNL's Ghar Wapsi postpaid plan provides unlimited voice calls without any FUP limit and 30GB of data per billing cycle. Sadly, this plan doesn't offer SMS benefits, which is underwhelming. However, the data benefit on the Rs 399 plan is 50% more than what private telcos are offering. And it doesn't offer any roaming calling benefits, which is another setback.
Airtel's Rs 399 plan gives 20GB data, unlimited voice calls and 100 SMS per day per billing cycle. Vodafone also has a RED Basic plan of Rs 399 which also gives unlimited voice calls including roaming outgoing calls and 20GB data per day. Idea Cellular also revised its Rs 389 Nirvana postpaid plan, which now gives 20GB data and unlimited roaming calls. Vodafone's RED Basic doesn't offer SMS benefits too.
So BSNL is marginally ahead of private telecom operators with the Rs 399 plan, but the company should have added SMS benefits, roaming calling benefits which would have been a gamechanger in the segment. As Reliance Jio doesn't offer any attractive postpaid plans, BSNL has a great chance of capturing the postpaid customers by offering attractive plans.
As per our sources, BSNL is also said to revise its entire postpaid tariff portfolio in the next couple of weeks to stay ahead of the competition. The BSNL Ghar Wapsi postpaid plan is valid across all the circles where BSNL has its services.