BSNL slashes mobile call rates by 80% for new customers

State-owned telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has announced an 80-per cent reduction in call rates - both per minute and per second billing plan – for new customers.

BSNL said the reduction, intended to speed up expansion of its customer base, will be valid for the first two months of a customer opting for BSNL's services, adding that it has improved its infrastructure to offer better service to customers.

"BSNL has revamped its infrastructure now. We have decided to cut mobile call rates by up to 80 per cent for new customers so that they get experience of our revamped services," reports quoted BSNL chairman and managing director Anupam Shrivastava as saying.

New customers, including those migrating from other service providers, will have to buy plan vouchers of Rs36 for BSNL's per-second plan and Rs37 for its per-minute plan.

Under the per-second billing plan, a customer recharging phone for Rs36, will be charged 1 paisa for every 3-second duration on local and STD calls made within the BSNL network and 2 paisa for 3 seconds on other network.

Customers opting for the Rs37 scheme will be charged 10 paisa per minute for making local as well as STD calls within BSNL and 30 paisa per minute on other network.

Between July and November this year, BSNL said, over 1.5 lakh MNP customers registered with the company to change their mobile network. BSNL, with a customer base of 79.6 million, is among the top five telecom companies with the highest number of new customers.

The BSNL network also lost 1,24,158 customers between the July-November period.

Meanwhile, BSNL has appointed Aegis BPO for providing customer service. Besides, it has started monitoring complaints on the social media to provide resolution to aggrieved customers.