BSNL has introduced two new STVs at Rs 8 and Rs 19 for prepaid users, which offer voice calls at 15 paisa per minute on net and at 35 paisa per minute off net PAN India. BSNL's Rs 8 plan comes with a validity of 30 days, while that of Rs 19 will have a validity period of 90 days. "These low value voice rate cutter STVs giving calls as low as @15 paisa / min with no liability of paying any large amount of fixed monthly charges is one of the most competitive STVs in present market scenario,"said R.K.Mittal, Director (CM) BSNL Board. BSNL has been fairly active in rolling out new voice and data plans thanks to stiff competition for Reliance Jio. Earlier this week, the state-owned telecom operator unveiled a new voice and data plan called ‘Plan 429’. It gives BSNL prepaid users unlimited voice calls (local/STD) on any network and 1 GB data per day for 90 days. This has been rolled out on PAN India basis (except Kerala Circle). Reliance Jio has completed a year and the network has close to 130 million subscribers in the country. Jio is entirely a 4G VoLTE network, and it has a host of affordable prepaid and postpaid data plans for users. As per TRAI data, average 4G download speed on Jio network was 18.65 mbps in July, which is almost the double of its closest rival Vodafone at 18.33 mbps. Thanks to Jio's disruptive data offers, rivals like Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea have lowered their tariffs as well. Airtel recently announced a slew of new plans offering data and voice calls for its prepaid customers starting from as low as Rs 5.
