Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been one telecom company that has been in a dilemma for the last few years. While out of all the telecom companies present in India, it is also one of the most resilient ones because of the government’s support behind it. The tag of being a government-owned PSU has kept the company living and breathing in the tough terrains of the Indian telecom industry. However, the situation for BSNL is only turning grim as the days pass by. Month on month, seeing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) reports on the subscriber count of various telecom companies, we are seeing that BSNL is having a massive leakage of subscribers from its base. This means that customers are leaving the BSNL network fast and this is something that needs to be fixed.
BSNL 4G Still a Pain-point
If the news headlines are to be believed, then it seems BSNL will be meeting an optimistic end very soon courtesy of the revival plan which includes the work of IIM-A. On these lines, BSNL’s debt is likely to be handled with care from now on. The plan will also likely include methods by which BSNL would be able to stop its churn at such an aggressive rate, and if not stop, at least slow it down to a manageable extent. When we think of BSNL right now, the main pain point for the subscribers is the lack of a 4G network, but while saying such a thing seems to be a big roadblock, we should be questioning whether or not it is the case in its entirety.
In a lot of places, BSNL has already started testing the 4G networks, and in these places, the subscribers are already being handed out 4G SIMs. The review of the customers of BSNL has also been positive given how good the speed and network have been. Besides, because of the fears of subscriber churn, the BSNL prepaid plans have become more attractive offering more data and longer validity, thus making the lives of subscribers easier. For a lot of people, being a BSNL subscriber is really being a sweet ride.
BSNL 3G is Not So Bad After all
However, even on a 3G network what a lot of people miss out on while judging BSNL is the quantum of download and upload speeds that BSNL is capable of offering. As per some of the consumers, the BSNL 3G network, although is not comparable with 4G download speeds, is still good enough for a lot of work. But, it is the lack of proper marketing, missing information about plans, the availability of 4G network and 3G network in various places which hurts the subscribers more.
With a vacuum created from the side of the company itself, the subscribers have nothing to believe but the whispers on the wind which come in the form of various marketing techniques from the private telcos. Hence, it’s imperative that to ensure the revival of BSNL in the truest sense, the telecom operator will have to salvage a plan in which its marketing is amped up and the consumers are able to get the latest information on their fingertips about BSNL’s plans and services.
