Countering Reliance Jio and its Rs 251 prepaid IPL plan, state-run telecom operator BSNL has now come up with a Rs 248 prepaid STV plan offering a whopping 153GB, which converts to 3GB data per day for a period of 51 days. BSNL says that "This will be useful for our subscriber to stream live IPL matches at a very economical rate." The IPL 2018 is scheduled from April 7 to May 27, which is 51 days. BSNL also stated that the plan is a limited period one and will be available for recharge only from April 7, 2018, to April 30, 2018. But on the brighter side, it's a pan-India plan.
Speaking more about the new Rs 248 prepaid plan, BSNL did not mention any voice calling benefits with this plan so the new plan may not offer any voice calls. And this plan is introduced to compete with Jio's Rs 251 plan, but sadly, Jio's plan offers 4G data while BSNL users have to settle down with 3G data only. Although the difference of speeds on 3G and 4G networks isn't a bigger one, BSNL has always been criticised by its users for its poor showing in the internet speeds department.
Coming to the Reliance Jio's Rs 251 plan, it was introduced a couple of days ago and comes with a validity of 51 days, same as the BSNL's plan. Jio is offering 2GB data per day with the plan, taking the overall data benefit to 102GB. That said, BSNL clearly has the upper hand in the data offering segment, but as stated, users get only 3G data on BSNL network, which is unacceptable in 2018.
On top of that, Jio's plan also offers voice calling benefits, although there's no mentioning of this in the press release which we received a couple of days, but all the Jio tariff plans come bundled with voice and data, and the voice is operated on VoLTE service.
Telecom operators are keeping themselves busy for this year's IPL. Reliance Jio announced a mobile game and TV show, while Airtel has announced the deployment of Massive MIMO Pre-5G technology. And now, BSNL has come up with a dedicated IPL 2018 plan, which is surprising. Vodafone India and Idea Cellular are yet to introduce something innovative, which is expected to happen tomorrow morning.
