BSNL to unveil 3 new pre-paid plans; STV26 to offer free calls

To match competition from private operators, state-owned BSNL will come up with three new pre-paid offerings on Republic Day, including Rs 26 tariff voucher that allows free local voice calls within its network during 26-hour validity.

"We will bring out three offerings...The first one is a Special Tariff Voucher or STV 26, which offers unlimited free voice calls in home network during the 26-hour validity, while the other two offers provide 1.5 times and double the talktime, respectively," BSNL Chairman and Managing Director, Anupam Shrivastava, told PTI.

The STV26 would be available between January 25 and January 31.

The other two are top-ups aimed at the higher-end segment and will remain on offer till March 31, he pointed out.

The second offer 'Combo 2601' will offer 1.5 times the call value and the third one 'Combo 6801' will offer double the talk time.

Under the Combo 2601, the telecom PSU will offer Rs 2,600 talktime in the main account along with Rs 1,300 talktime in a secondary account. The talktime under the secondary account, which comes with a time limit of three months, will have to be exhausted first by the consumer.

The main account that will hold the full talktime of Rs 2,600 has no time limit for usage.

The Combo 6801 offer, which works on the same principle, offers Rs 6,800 in the main account and a similar amount in the consumers' secondary account, thus giving consumers double the talktime.

"This is the first-of-its-kind offer. We have implemented an Intelligent Network architecture which allows us to bring interesting offerings for our customers. The architecture enables us a better way to design flexible top-up and recharges," Shrivastava said.

Yesterday, BSNL came out with a pre-paid scheme under which new subscribers can make 30 minutes of free voice calls -- local and STD -- daily to any other network for a month, for Rs 149.

Customers will also have an option to get similar free unlimited calls for three months by paying lumpsum amount of Rs 439, the company had said yesterday adding that as Fair Usage Policy, the calls to other network are limited to 30 minutes per day.

In addition, customers would get 300 MB of data as part of the offer announced yesterday.