Government-owned BSNL has now revised its Rs 666 prepaid plan which is also known as BSNL Sixer plan. BSNL has increased the data benefit offered with the plan to 2GB data per day for the same validity period. Because the company is currently running an Extra Data offer, the BSNL Rs 666 plan offers a total of 3GB data per day till December 31, post which the data benefit will be reduced to 2GB per day. This is the second major revision to BSNL Rs 666 plan in a span of just two months; For the unaware, BSNL recently modified the Rs 666 prepaid recharge to offer free voice calling even to MTNL numbers. The last announcement was made right after the Cabinet's decision to merge BSNL and MTNL to stabilise both the telcos. The newly revised Rs 666 prepaid recharge will be effective from December 23, 2019, across all the telecom circles where BSNL is operating right now.
BSNL Rs 666 Prepaid Recharge: What it Offers Now?
BSNL is moving against the private telecom operators in India right now. While the top three telcos have already increased the tariff prices, BSNL did not implement any price hike, and at the same time, the telco has increased data benefit of one of the popular prepaid plan in its portfolio.
The revised BSNL Rs 666 prepaid recharge offers free voice calls (capped at 250 minutes per day), 3GB data per day including the Extra Data offer and 100 SMSes per day for 134 days. As for the voice calling benefit, they are capped at 250 minutes per day and the voice calls can be made even to MTNL network. For example, BSNL will not deduct additional talk time balance from the customer's account for a call made to the MTNL network. Sadly, there's a FUP limit on voice calling on a daily basis though.
Moving onto the data benefit, users recharging the Rs 666 prepaid plan will get 3GB data per day until December 31, 2019, after which the benefit will be reduced to 2GB per day. Considering the current scenario in the prepaid segment, BSNL may not extend the Extra Data offer in 2020. The revised Rs 666 plan will be effective across all the circles starting December 23, 2019.
This is the fourth revision to BSNL Rs 666 prepaid plan this year. At the start of 2019, BSNL reduced the validity of the plan to 122 days from 129 days, but after a few months, the validity of the pack has been increased to 134 days. Just a couple of months ago, BSNL added free voice calling benefit to MTNL network, and now, it has increased the data benefit. So the telco has revised a single plan four times in 2019, which is something very interesting and shows how important the plan is to the company.
BSNL Prepaid Tariff Hike: What You Need to Know
BSNL is currently the fourth largest telecom operator in India with over 120 million subscribers and sitting below the private operators like Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel. The top three telcos already announced a major price hike for prepaid users earlier this month; They increased tariff prices by nearly 40%, but BSNL did not announce any tariff hike in the industry. The company reportedly held talks regarding tariff hike, but nothing is confirmed for now.
There's no doubt that BSNL is extremely caught up in other aspects like VRS, merger with MTNL and launching 4G services, however, tariff hike would increase the financial strength of the company itself. It seems like BSNL wants to compensate for the lack of 4G services by providing the best tariff plans in the industry.
