Tariff hike: Just a few hours ago Bharti Airtel, one of the country’s leading telecom operators, slightly increased the prices of its two selected prepaid plans. For this reason, the organization is currently being practiced a lot in Netpara. But even if the finger is pointed at Airtel, they are not the only ‘guilty’! Rather, the state-owned company BSNL or Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has also taken virtually the same step invisibly. The telco has revised one of its plan benefits in half – BSNL has reduced the validity of its Rs 99 plan. And with this move by the company, this recharge option has indirectly become expensive. Because, keeping the price and other benefits the same, only reducing the validity has increased its average daily cost. Incidentally, this is not the first time that BSNL has done something like this; The company has already reduced the validity of many of its plans as a means of increasing its tariff charges. Customers usually don’t notice this as the price or recharge cost remains the same However, let’s now know in detail what is available in BSNL’s Rs 99 plan.
BSNL’s Rs 99 plan: What benefits will you get after the revision?
BSNL’s Rs 99 plan now comes with a validity of 17 days, whereas earlier rechargers used to get a total of 18 days, meaning one more day of validity. The recent change may not seem like a big deal, but it does slightly increase the average daily cost of the plan – it will now cost Rs 5.82 per day to use it, as opposed to an average of Rs 5.5 per day.
Note that the plan in question is a Special Tariff Voucher (STV) and does not come with data or any other benefits. It will offer unlimited voice calling option for 17 days only.
As mentioned at the outset, this move could help BSNL cross Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) marginally and improve returns from the wireless mobile network business. But not only this Rs 99 plan, but because of this attitude of the company, their prepaid plan of Rs 599 will now get less benefits – BSNL has removed the benefit of unlimited night data from it.
