BSNL has been making revisions to its prepaid plans for a while now. The government-owned PSU, which is struggling with financial issues, has now revised the popular Rs 1,098 prepaid plan. BSNL's Rs 1,098 prepaid plan was introduced way back in 2016 when Reliance Jio made its entry to the Indian market. This plan from BSNL used to ship benefits for 84 days, but now, the company has reduced it to 75 days. One of the highlights of this prepaid plan from BSNL was its unlimited data offering, however, BSNL has revised that as well. BSNL is now capping the data benefit to 375GB only, but on the brighter side, there's no daily data limit. After the completion of 375GB data benefit, BSNL users can browse at a mere 40 Kbps speeds.
BSNL Rs 1,098 Plan Gets a Major Revision: What It Offers Now?
BSNL has been revising several prepaid plans every now and then and the latest one to get the treatment is the Rs 1,098 prepaid plan. As per the most recent update, the Rs 1,098 now has a data limit and reduced validity. Before the revision, the Rs 1,098 prepaid plan offered benefits for 84 days, but it now offers benefits for just 75 days from the date of recharge.
Also, the data benefit used to unlimited earlier, which has now been revised to 375GB for the entire validity of 75 days. The revised benefits are already valid in Kerala circle only. Besides these benefits, the plan also ships with unlimited voice calling even to Mumbai and Delhi circles, and 100 SMSes per day for 75 days. Earlier, the plan did not offer any fixed data and the company used to market it as unlimited 2G/3G data plan. Even after this revision, BSNL is marketing the plan as an unlimited data plan, but do make a note that there's a limit for 75 days and not daily data limit. After the 375GB data limit, BSNL users can enjoy data speeds of 40 Kbps, which will just be enough to send WhatsApp messages.
BSNL Restricts Voice Calling to 250 Minutes per Day in Combo Plans
In other news, we have recently reported that BSNL has started restricting voice calls to just 250 minutes per day with some of its combo plans. The new change will be effective from August 19, according to the latest information we have received. Earlier, BSNL prepaid plans with unlimited calling facility used to ship with truly unlimited voice calling without any FUP limit. After August 19, BSNL prepaid plans of Rs 186, Rs 429, Rs 485, Rs 666 and Rs 1,699 will impose daily calling limit of 250 minutes.
BSNL is making it clear that the company wants to increase revenues and ARPU by reducing the validity and imposing voice calling restriction. To recall, private telcos Airtel and Vodafone Idea also used to restrict voice calling to 250 minutes per day and 1000 minutes per week, but it has been removed now to tackle the threat from Jio. Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea are providing VoLTE service to the subscribers, which could be the reason behind the removal of FUP limit on voice calls.
BSNL Facing Financial Issues Right Now
In other news, BSNL is now facing severe financial issues and there's no support from the government until now. It's expected that the new government will provide some support to the state-run BSNL and MTNL operators, however, that seems to be not the case. DoT has been preparing a relief package for both BSNL and MTNL, but right now, there's no information on when the package will be given to the telcos. With the lack of 4G services, BSNL is unable to compete with the private telcos who are invested a lot in improving 4G coverage.
