BSNL Offers 0.75% Discount on Cashless Bill Payments; Airtel Offers 3 Month Free Broadband Internet
Albeit in a smaller scale, but telecom companies are also doing their bit to promote cashless payments for their services.
India’s national telecom carrier, BSNL, has just announced a flat discount of 0.75% for every customer who uses cashless mode to pay their bills.
In a statement, BSNL declared: “MOS for Communication and Railways, Manoj Sinha announced 0.75 per cent incentive or discount on online or electronic payment. BSNL, in line with the government’s vision of making India cashless, requests its esteemed customers to join BSNL in our walk towards a cashless society..”
Thus, for a customer whose bill is Rs 1000, and if he decided to pay this bill digitally, then he may get a flat discount of Rs 7.5.
In fact, this discount would be applicable for pre-paid recharges as well, besides being applicable for post-paid bill payments for GSM, landline and broadband. This special discount is valid on the total amount (excluding service tax), for bill payments between December 22, 2016 to March 31, 2017 only.
Earlier, Govt. of India had announced 11 major incentives for cashless payments, which included cheaper petrol, discounted rail catering and lesser toll charges. Besides, a special lottery based incentives scheme has also been announced to encourage digital transactions.
Yesterday we reported that 70% of all rural population has started using e-wallets for their daily expenses.
BSNL To Provide Email Addresses in 8 Indian Languages
BSNL has inked a partnership with Jaipur based Datamail which will enable them to provide email addresses to their customers in 8 Indian languages.
BSNL Managing Director Anupam Shrivastav said, that this service will propel PM Modi’s Digital India mission, and take it to the next level.
BSNL Director for Consumer Fixed Access services N K Gupta gave further details, as he said, “The linguistic email service offered by BSNL will have DataOne. Bharat domain (in Hindi or Devanagari script) and email address will be offered in eight regional languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Marathi,”
Airtel To Provide Free Broadband Internet for 3 months
In a bid to promote their new broadband service using V-Fiber technology, India’s largest telecom player Airtel has announced free three months of broadband Internet for all their landline customers.
As of now, around 3.51 lakh users are subscribed to Airtel’s landline services, and via this plan, they are aiming to convert all these customers into their V-Fiber based broadband plan.
This move is being seen as a reply to Jio’s similar plan for their newly launched broadband services. On an additional, Airtel is also offering free voice calls along with free broadband Internet for customers based in Mumbai.
Airtel landline customers only need to pay Rs 1000 extra for availing this free offer, which is being offered on EMI basis.
Airtel’s broadband plans would start at Rs 599 for 10 GB, whereas for the unlimited calling plan, the tariff starts at Rs 1299 for 60GB.
Earlier BSNL was giving 1% discount on bill paid through ECS, which was withdrawn some months back. So presently the postpaid customers will tend to close there ECS bank payment system and start bill pay online through BSNL portal.