This is a first of its kind deal between a public and private telecom company. Aircel is the first telecom operator to sign a passive infrastructure sharing agreement with the publically owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).

Mr Gurdeep Singh, COO, Aircel, said, “This is a historic moment for the company. Aircel will now have access to strategically located sites across BSNL’s 21 circles (excluding Mumbai & Delhi). Leveraging BSNL’s passive infrastructure will help Aircel meet its aggressive network roll out plans in addition to reducing operational cost.”

Mr Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, BSNL added, “We are happy to partner with Aircel. BSNL has a strong nationwide coverage and offers the best value proposition in the Indian telecom market. Our objective is to provide quality and reliable service and thereby increase our partner’s confidence”.

Aircel currently has approximately 32,000 network base stations across the country and post this partnership, it will also have access to BSNL’s 45,000 network towers across its 21 circles.

This Diwali is definitely bringing up a lot of heat, and nope we are not talking about fire crackers. This Diwali is charging up competition between telecom operators and all are in a race to bring in the best offers. Here are the offers that our publically owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has brought this Diwali.
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BSNL has announced a new promotional offer for prepaid users in Kerala. Starting from today till Diwali i.e. October 17, a user will get 10 percent additional talk time on top-up recharges of Rs. 100, Rs. 200 or Rs. 500. In addition to this, users can also avail unlimited GPRS voucher that will cost Rs. 20 for one day or Rs. 199 for the whole month.

BSNL’s GSM project is facing quite some issues in setting up the necessary telecom infrastructure. As per the standard process, the government owned telecom giant attracted proposals from various telecom equipment manufacturers for its Rs 30,000 crore GSM project. The big players in this race were: Ericsson, Huawei, NSN, Alcatel Lucent and ZTE. The bidding process was going smoothly until the Finnish telecom equipment maker; Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) was rejected by BSNL’s bidding panel.

NSN’s proposal was rejected because it had not submitted an experience certificate for the North Zone. (Experience certificate is required to certify operating experience in each of the four Indian Zones). Now, NSN has shot off a letter to BSNL claiming that the PSU has unfairly singled out NSN from the bidding process. NSN said that the certificate submitted for other zones was relevant for the North zone as well; in addition, the letter also said that if BSNL had to disqualify its bid, then it should have also rejected Ericsson’s bid since the latter had allegedly not given a separate certificate.

BSNL has referred this dispute to an integrity panel approved by the Central Vigilance. Two former Chief Election Commissioners — Mr T.S. Krishnamurthy and Mr B.B. Tandon — are the members on this panel.

Ed’s Note: Our overworked brains ditched us. Sorry for the goof up, we have added the plans and edited the story accordingly.

When TeleGyaan did an exclusive review of MTNL’s 2G/3G plans, one of our avid readers voiced his opinion and asked us to look at other operators in the landscape. Given the reader-friendly blog we are, here is a post comparing all the GSM – Blackberry plans on offer::

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State-owner telco – BSNL is expected to offer Blackberry services from April. This move would help the operator gain an edge over the others. Here’s how::

• BSNL is one of the two operators offering 3G services in the country. 
• The other operators which provide Blackberry services, are in the queue to bid for 3G, which is not expected to take place soon…
• Thus, lau, nching the service in April could give it a first-mover advantage in the Blackberry-3G zone. 

However, the user base for the service is quite small and with Airtel and Vodafone providing ‘killer’ plans for Blackberry users, BSNL might just find it tough to compete against the private telcos. We expect BSNL to come up with some equally good plans to counter competition.

BSNL launched its 3G services a while ago and we are here to give you the Gyaan you need on the same. This review will take you through all the plans on offer and their respective pros and cons::

Basic Gyaan::

• The service is available for both Prepaid and Postpaid users. 
• Currently, users cannot migrate from existing 2G service to the 3G one. 
• They will have to buy a new Sim for the same. 
• Users can avail voice and data benefits through the service 

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After the launch of MTNL’s Jadoo, it’s now BSNL’s turn to launch the high speed 3G service. The operator announced the launch of 3G in Tamil Nadu recently. The service will be first pilot tested in Chennai, where the service will be the first of its kind. Moreover, the operator plans to cover 700 cities and has already set an ample amount, to the extent of Rs. 2700 crore, aside for the same.

Let’s wait and watch how the service is accepted by the users down south.

BSNL’s new plan could easily set off another tariff war amongst the operators. Dubbed as India Golden Fifty Plan, it tends to set a standard price for all the networks across the whole of India. Be it local calls, STD or even SMS, a user will be charged only 50 paise. If a user tries a call on any BSNL number, he’ll be charged 20 and 30 paise for local calls and STD respectively.

The plan will be available from March 1 for a monthly rent of Rs. 375.

We Say: Even though the tariff is quite lucrative, the monthly rent is a bit of downer. Rs. 375 per month in addition to the call charges will make many think before jumping onto this scheme. We would recommend this only if you’re usage is around Rs. 500 – 600 per month.

Government owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) has introduced a new prepaid mobile SIM costing Rs 50 in its Maharashtra-Goa circle. This new SIM card would come with a talktime of Rs 10 and would offer 50 days of initial validity. This new SIM card is specially designed for people having high calling usage on other BSNL mobile phones. The call rates on this new SIM would be 60p/min to BSNL mobile during the day and 20p/min during the night (11 pm to 6 am).

Along with the launch of this new prepaid SIM, BSNL also announced the reduction in the cost of its existing SIM card. The prepaid SIM which would earlier cost Rs 149 will now be available at the cost of Rs 121, indicating a total reduction of around 25% on the cost of this starter pack. This SIM card carries a talktime of Rs 50 and provides an initial validity of 90 days. According to the press release from BSNL, both these SIM cards would be exclusively available at the 489 Customer Service Centers of BSNL spread across Maharashtra and Goa.