State-run BSNL has reportedly witnessing increased demand for its Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) services across the country. A new Business Line report says BSNL installed over 85,000 new connections last month. And the telco is focussing on taking the overall number to more than one lakh per month. BSNL is the leading broadband operator in India with around eight million subscribers under its belt. However, the ISP is losing the existing subscribers regularly, as per the data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). BSNL's wired broadband user base used to be over 12 million a couple of years now, but it has now come down to around eight million. At the end of August 2020, BSNL's broadband market share was 39.84%, followed by Bharti Airtel with 21.86% share.
BSNL Plans to Install 1 Lakh FTTH Connections Every Month
According to the Telecom Subscription Data released by Trai for August 2020, BSNL lost 97,855 existing users. However, the Business Line reports the ISP added a very decent 88,779 FTTH connections. Furthermore, it is said that BSNL installed 15,793 connections in Kerala circle alone, followed by Tamil Nadu with 10,539 new connections. The report further added that the users are opting for BSNL's basic FTTH plans, but there's no information on which is the best selling broadband plan.
This news comes as a surprise because BSNL lost around one lakh existing users in August itself. But it is worth noting that the ISP introduced affordable plans such as the Rs 449, Rs 599 and even modified the existing Rs 777 broadband plans. BSNL revised these plans to match the similar offerings from JioFiber and Airtel Xstream Fiber.
The Trai might release subscription data for September 2020 in a couple of weeks which will give an exact idea on this report. At the moment, BSNL is going head to head with JioFiber in terms of broadband plans. The Rs 399 JioFiber plan is tackled by BSNL's Rs 449 plan. All the latest offerings from BSNL come with unlimited data (aka 3.3TB FUP limit) which might be attracting the customers. Earlier, majority of the BSNL's broadband plans had a mere FUP limit.
