Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been making numerous consumer centric moves in the market lately to lure the subscribers. To do that, the operator has been launching new offers, content offerings, free subscriptions to services and what not. But, in a new move, BSNL has introduced a step that a lot of its subscribers might not like. The government led telecom operator has announced in a new move that it would place a daily cap on calling. This means that select prepaid plans by BSNL won’t come with the tag of truly “unlimited calls”. In an extremely competitive industry, this move is likely to disappoint a lot of subscribers who are currently using the listed prepaid plans. In comparison to the other telcos, this also puts BSNL behind.
Reintroduction of Weekly Calling Cap on BSNL Prepaid Recharges
BSNL has issued new information about this move and has stated that the prepaid vouchers of Rs 186, Rs 429, Rs 485, Rs 666 and Rs 1,699 would not offer truly unlimited calling. In this new notification, the telecom operator has noted that customers using more than 250 minutes outgoing minutes which would include local, STD and roaming on BSNL network or any other network in a day will be charged at base plan tariff. That is to say, that if a subscriber has a base tariff which allows calling at 1p/second, then the consumer will be charged at the same price in case they go overboard the limit of 250 minutes in a day. The subscribers will be charged this price until midnight. From the next day onwards, they will again have the buffer to utilise 250 minutes of calling.
To recall, when for the first time Reliance Jio started the trend of offering free unlimited calling to its subscribers in the industry, the Mukesh Ambani led telecom operator did not cap voice calling which set it apart from other telcos. However, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea limited voice calling to 250 minutes per day and 1000 minutes per week. Later on, both Airtel and Vodafone Idea too removed the voice calling cap offering truly unlimited calling. Soon after the industry grew more competitive and there was a race to lure subscribers, the monthly and the weekly cap on calling was done away with.
BSNL Increases Data Offering on Abhinandan-151 Plan
Apart from this single move which BSNL has introduced, the telco has been introducing other offers for its subscribers. In a new announcement, the telco has announced that it will be offering 50% more data on of its newly introduced Abhinandan-151 plan. The plan which used to ship 1GB data daily to the subscribers is now offering 1.5GB data. Not only this, but the plan also offers unlimited calling, 100 SMS per day for 24 days.
