After Mukesh Ambani dropped the bomb called Jio on India’s telecom companies, the telcos are coming up with strategic plans to retain their customers. Fuelling this price war further in the telecom market, BSNL is planning to offer free voice calling at plans that will be cheaper than even Reliance Jio.

Presently Jio offers free voice call for 4G subscribers and free data for three months but BSNL is planning to extend this free voice call offer to 2G and 3G users as well.

BSNL chairman and managing director Anupam Shrivastava told Times Of India, “We are closely observing the market as well as Jio’s performance. We will also come up with lifetime free-voice plans from the new year as part of fresh offerings”.  

These are the plans that BSNL is likely to offer:

  • The lifetime free-voice-tariff plans will be launched in Januaryat Rs 2-4 cheaper than the Rs-149 entry price of Jio. 
  • The new plans will be offered to BSNL’s mobile customers who also have a broadband connection at home.
  •  Under this plan, home broadband will be used to route outgoing mobile calls through the landline network.

Market analysts say that the already crowded telecom market may be further affected by BSNL’s offer. So it will be interesting to see whether other operators such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea also slash their tariffs. In any case, it will be a win-win situation for customers.