Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Varun Kashyap & Sridevi Reddy
Co-Founders, Zithara.ai
Transforming Indian Offline Retail and Customer Engagement Using AI


Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Vodafone Idea (Vi) are both cash-strapped telcos arguably offering the best-prepaid plans in India. The reason is obviously to retain and attract new customers. But if you are choosing a 84 days prepaid plan from both of the companies in the same range, you are going to get confused. This is because both the companies offer users strong options to choose from in the 84 days validity category. However, I have narrowed the benefits and the disadvantages of the plan to help you better understand which plan is more apt.
BSNL Rs 599 Prepaid Plan
Let’s start with BSNL’s Rs 599 prepaid plan. The telco offers it to users living across the country. This plan offers users 5GB daily data for 84 days along with truly unlimited voice calling and 100 SMS/day. After consuming 5GB of data for the day, the internet speed for the user will drop to 84 Kbps. In addition to this, users get truly unlimited data at night (between 12 AM and 5 AM) which doesn’t affect their FUP data for the rest of the day. There’s an additional benefit of Zing included.
Let’s take a look at how Vi’s plan does against this plan from BSNL.
Vodafone Idea (Vi) Rs 599 Prepaid Plan
Vodafone Idea offers its Rs 599 prepaid plan with 1.5GB daily data only. This is way less than what users get with the BSNL’s same denomination plan. Then there is an unlimited voice calling and 100 SMS/day benefit with an additional OTT benefit of Vi Movies & TV.
However, users are entitled to get the ‘Binge All Night’ and ‘Weekend Data Rollover’ offers from the company. For the unaware, the ‘Binge All Night’ offer is the same as what BSNL is offering to its users at night – truly unlimited data without affecting the FUP data for the day. However, Vodafone Idea’s plan offers it for 6 hours that starts at 12 AM and ends at 6 AM which is one hour more than BSNL’s plan.