ET’s Report It has been claimed that BSNL has got a large number of new customers in the last few weeks. The reason behind this could be the tariff hikes made by Jio, Airtel and Vodafone Idea in recent days, because after the rate hike, people started criticizing it on social media and hashtags like ‘BoycottJio’ and ‘BSNL ki ghar wapsi’ were trending. The report states that since the tariff hike, about 2,50,000 people have switched to BSNL using mobile number portability (MNP).
BSNL also reportedly got around 2.5 million new connections as their tariffs are still affordable for low-income users. Of course, the biggest reason behind this could be the increase in tariffs. As we mentioned, all private operators had increased their tariffs by 11-24 percent. Vi’s annual data plan saw a maximum increase of Rs 600. On the other hand, Airtel and Reliance’s annual pack with 365 days validity became Rs 3,599.
Now, if we compare this Jio pack with a similar pack from BSNL, the BSNL pack costs Rs 2,395. On the other hand, the average price of 28-day packs from private operators is Rs 189-199, while BSNL packs with similar benefits start at Rs 108.
BSNL is now rapidly moving towards 4G rollout and the government plans to switch it to 5G soon. In such a situation, it will be interesting to see how much users will be inclined towards BSNL after upgrading to a better network and whether BSNL will keep its tariffs limited to affordable rates even after upgrading to 4G and 5G networks or not?
