BSNL Offers 2GB/Day For Rs 79 Under India’s 1st MVNO Service; How Will Jio React Now?

In the last few months, Reliance Jio has targeted exclusively India’s rural belt, with astonishing voice/data plans, and even Jio Phone’s sizzling schemes.

But not, BSNL aims to disrupt Jio’s ambitious plans, with their MVNO service.

Plans as cheap as Rs 29 per month has been launched, and this certainly makes Jio’s ultra cheap plans look expensive.

But what exactly is MVNO, and how does this work?

Read on to know more!

India’s 1st MVNO Service Is Now Live!

State run BSNL has launched India’s first Mobile virtual network operator or MVNO service, in partnership with Aerovoyce and Plintron.

Aerovoyce is Chennai based licensed holder of MVNO service, owned by AdPay Mobile Payment India. While Plintron is global MNC specializing in providing mobility services.

The target demographics for BNSL’s MVNO service are rural areas, where mobile connectivity has still not reached. A pilot project of MVNO services was launched in 2016.

Dirt Cheap Plans Unveiled!

Under the BSNL’s MVNO services, two low cost plans have been launched: Rs 29 and Rs 79.

While Rs 29 plan offers unlimited calling between Aerovoyce users; Rs 79 plans offers unlimited calling and 2 GB data per day for a month.

This is without doubt the cheapest data plan as of now, from any telecom service provider.

AeroVoyce founder and chief executive Sivakumar Kuppusamy said, “Our focus areas will be rural, tier-II and tier-III cities to bring best affordable services in sync with the Digital India initiative,”

How Will It Work?

The concept of MVNO is pretty unique: Under this, any service provider can offer mobile services, without owning any telecom infrastructure such as towers and optical fiber network.

The MVNO service provider uses a host network’s infrastructure, and then can resell the services under their own plans and offerings.

In this case, Aerovoyce will actually use BSNL’s existing network, and offer their mobile connectivity plans to rural areas under their own brand name. After-sales, billing, customer service etc shall be operated by Aerovoyce.

BSNL estimates that the MVNO service is Rs 2800 crore opportunity, and within next 12 months, they are expecting revenues of Rs 600 crore+ from MVNO services alone.

In a related news, BSNL’s satellite telephony services is a big hit as they were able to sell more than 4000 satellite phones in the last one year. Major clients of BSNL’s satellite telephony services have been Border Security Force (BSF), disaster management agencies, ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation), Railways.

They are aiming to sell 10,000 units by March 2019.