BSNL is on a roll at the moment. Ever since the Cabinet announced revival package for both the PSUs- BSNL and MTNL, the company has been launching new prepaid plans to both the existing users and new users. In its latest move, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited or BSNL has introduced a new prepaid Data STV of Rs 998 that ships with benefits for 210 days. Sadly, it's a data-only STV from BSNL and it does not ship with any voice calling or SMS benefits. Overall, with its new data STV, BSNL is offering a whopping 420GB data, spread across 2GB data per day for a period of 210 days. At the moment, this new plan from BSNL has been launched only in Kerala circle and there's no update on when the company will bring this plan to other circles.
BSNL STV 998: Whopping 420GB Data on Offer
BSNL is usually not known for launching prepaid plans in Kerala, especially when compared to other circles. However, the company is treating its Kerala customer equal to other circles. For example, it launched three attractive prepaid plans recently- Rs 997, Rs 365 and Rs 97 recently, and now, it has come up with the data-only prepaid plan of Rs 998.
Aforesaid, BSNL is not providing voice calling and SMS benefits with this prepaid plan since it's a data-only prepaid plan. The state-run telco is shipping 2GB data per day for a period of 210 days. The validity of this plan is 365 days, but the freebies (data benefit) is valid for 210 days. So the overall data benefit becomes 420GB. Additionally, BSNL is also offering Personalised Ringback Tone (PRBT) benefit for the first two months. After the completion of 2GB daily data, BSNL will cap the speeds to 40 Kbps which will be enough to send and receive texts on WhatsApp.
This is a unique offering from BSNL as most of the private telcos are going after launching unlimited combo plans. Even Reliance Jio is not concentrating on data-only prepaid plans, but BSNL is taking this segment more seriously than before. Jio's Rs 251 data-only prepaid plan comes with 2GB data per day for 51 days.
Should You Recharge With Data-Only STVs or Unlimited Combo Plans?
Data-only prepaid plans come with slightly better validity compared to the combo plans. Just a few days ago, BSNL also launched Rs 997 combo prepaid plan offering benefits of unlimited voice calls (capped at 250 minutes per day), 3GB data per day and 100 SMSes per day for 180 days. The newly launched data STV of Rs 998 offers 2GB data per day for 210 days. As you can clearly see, the data-only plan is better at the validity, whereas the combo plan ships with voice calling and SMS benefits too.
Even in the case of Reliance Jio's Rs 251 prepaid plan, it offers better validity of 51 days but lacks the basic calling and SMS benefits. Reliance Jio's prepaid plans with the validity of more than 28 days start at Rs 349 as all the prepaid plans under Rs 300 come with just 28 days validity.
Data-only STVs are for the users who rely on WhatsApp or other VoIP calling apps to make voice calls, but for standard users, unlimited combo plans from the telcos are the de-facto options. Notably, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are not providing any data-only prepaid plans as they entirely rely on the combo plans which offer better benefits.
