Exclusive: BSNL launches special 3G Combo Data Plans

State-owned telecom service provider BSNL has launched special 3G Combo Data plans for its postpaid and prepaid GSM mobile customers. Presently BSNL has introduced four 3G Combo data plans with monthly charges of Rs 300, Rs 500, Rs 1000 and Rs 2000 offering certain amount of free 3G data usage, free talk minutes, free SMS and free video calls. Plan details are as below.

Fixed Monthly Charges (Postpaid)RCV Amount (Prepaid)

Inclusive of STax

3G prepaid RCV validity is 30 days. The free minutes voice/video calls, SMSs  and data usage  offered  with plan  are to be  consumed within the validity period. No carry forward of unutilized freebies are allowed. Free data usage is available while national roaming also. However, free voice/video calls & SMSs are available from home network only. Other charges and usage beyond free limits will be as per normal call charges i.e. base voice plan under 3G service. In case of data plan the customers not purchasing data card from BSNL has to activate through FRC 120.

Plans effective from 1st Feb’11.

Exclusive : BSNL To Launch Mobile App Store

India’s PSU telecom company, BSNL will very soon launch its own Mobile application store for its 2G and 3G GSM mobile customers. The company has signed an agreement with Accenture  for development of application store. The application store would allow its customers to download applications from a portfolio of around 3400 applications of various genres. The app store will comprise of both paid and free apps. Almost 80 % of apps would be in paid category while remaining 20% would be available for free.

The APP store is a service for the mobile phones which allows users to browse and download applications . The applications are downloaded directly on to the mobile phones. App store is basically the collection of Mobile applications from across the world. As per the agreement between Accenture and BSNL, the later would work only as publisher of the application acting in  pass through manner and the app store will be established by Accenture.

In India Aircel was the first company to announce the launch of  mobile application store in association with Infosys. But Airtel was the first company to actually launch Mobile app store  ”Airtel App central “for its customers. Later Vodafone and Reliance too launched their  mobile app store.

Vodafone rules MNP war – Exclusive All India MNP Data

It has been eleven days that Mobile Number Portability (MNP) became a reality across India and Vodafone continues to rule the MNP space across different circles just like Haryana circle. Idea Cellular, Aircel, Airtel and Tata GSM are other players which are performing fairly well. Vodafone , Airtel and Idea Cellular have got maximum port in customers but Airtel’s port out customers base is fairly high and matches with biggest loser BSNL’s port out numbers which should be a matter of worry for India leading telecom company. Apart from BSNL it is Reliance GSM which is witnessing major churn out. Another inference that can be drawn from this data is that CDMA as a category is now loosing its sheen and CDMA customers are now switching to GSM operators.

TRAI Prohibits Exclusive MNP offers

TRAI has asked all service providers to withdraw discriminative exclusive MNP offers. Ever since the launch of MNP in India almost all the operators have launched special MNP offers to lure customers of other operators to switch.

TRAI terms any such special tariff meant solely for inducing customer churn of other operators and not available to ordinary customers as discriminatory. TRAI is of the view that such offers violate the clause 10 of Telecommunication tariff order 1999.Clause 10 of TTO 1999 specifies that no service provider will not discriminate between the subscribers of any class and such classification of subscribers shouldn’t be arbitrary. Whenever differential tariffs are offered to any customer ,it should be the responsibility of the operator to justify the basis and it should be logical too. TRAI says that offering differential tariff for MNP is not a valid logic as it intends to induce the customer churn only.