Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks

The New Year’s eve is drawing closer, and people are already on the task of drafting their New Year’s wishes. However, everyone who wishes to send out new year’s wishes to their contacts via SMS should make note that the pre-new year’s eve i.e. December 31 and the new year’s eve, January 1 every year have been considered as blackout days for many telecom operators. But in its latest move, the government led telecom operator, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has done away with blackout days. This means that BSNL subscribers won’t have to worry about running out of balance in case they try sending out messages to their contacts while using STVs or SMS packs. BSNL also confirmed that there wouldn’t be any Blackout days in 2019 as well.

BSNL Trashes Blackout Days Entirely
To recall, the first time that any telecom operator did not resort to blackout days was when Reliance Jio made its entry into the telecom segment in September 2016. After the introduction of its very competitively priced plans, other telcos also had to make drastic changes to their pricing and portfolio to stay up to date. Following on the footsteps of Reliance Jio, now the state-run telecom operator BSNL has also announced that it would be removing all its blackout days meaning that subscribers will be able to take advantage of their STVs and tariff vouchers uninterrupted even during holidays, major festivals and occasion like New Year’s Eve. This new change by BSNL is not limited to any one circle, but it will be valid for all circles. Therefore, any of the BSNL subscribers who would like to send SMS to their contacts or ring up their contacts using the special vouchers or tariff plans will be able to do so without any interruption, and they won’t be charged at the standard rate of Rs 3 per SMS.