Is BSNL Still A Good Option In Today’s Date and Time?

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been in news lately in the past 2 months for various wrong reasons, mainly being whether the company would have its survival or was the government trying to dissolve the company. But the path and the governments take on BSNL as well as MTNL has been clear. The government has been supporting BSNL with the revival package by deploying its Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) which has a target of 90-95K employees opting for it both from the BSNL and MTNL’s side. This has made that the company is going to make it from this precarious situation, so all the customers of the company shouldn’t be worrying about its existential crisis.
In terms of sheer coverage- BSNLs the best
BSNL has a great network coverage across the length and breadth of India and no private competitor has come so close to it since quite long. You may probably argue to the fact that it has got undue favor being a publicly held company and the government’s policies favoring the company. But private companies were hardly interested in having their fair share of contribution and were busy cashing on the urban data phenomena. But this scenario has changed by the new entrant headed by India’s richest man.
When it comes to the breadth of prepaid plans, there is no telecom operator in the industry that even comes close to BSNL in this case. Even after rolling out lots of plans and having a massive prepaid portfolio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have not been able to match BSNL in the extensiveness of the prepaid portfolio. If you are a BSNL subscriber, then you will easily be able to get plans which are tailor-made for your needs. While in the case of other telecoms, you might get a little undercut, or sometimes you might have to pay more than you need to. But, with BSNL, that won’t be the case as you will get a voice-only prepaid plan, plan with only data, combo offerings, STVs and much more.
BSNL has lacked the 4G revolution
Yes, there is a drawback or a deal-breaker for today’s youth. While every other telecom company boarded the 4G bandwagon, BSNL hadn’t launched its services in 3 years until recently where it re-farmed its 3G spectrum to launch 4G in some places. But largely, the users have been on the legacy network with 3G and the speeds lagging far behind the competition. This has made quite a problem for heavy data users. Since the government keens on reviving the sick telcos by first merging them both (BSNL & MTNL) and then providing 4G spectrum for VoLTE and to stay competitive and relevant in the telecom scenario.
No monthly minimum recharges
What goes for in the company’s favor is that there are no pre-requisites to have monthly minimum recharges what the other private incumbents have started practicing. This can be annoying to customers as the incoming calls facility gets hampered in some cases if not recharged time. Also, the company uses the old talk time system validity which gets extended when recharged.