BSNL prepaid plan: The company's prepaid plan Abhinandan-151 comes with a validity period of 24 days

BSNL or Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has announced a new prepaid plan, called "Abhinandan-151". Priced at Rs 151, the Abhinandan-151 plan comes with a validity period of 24 days and offers benefits such as unlimited calls to any network, unlimited data and 100 SMS per day to any network, the state-run telecom company said on Twitter. The addition into its prepaid portfolio by BSNL comes at a time the telecom sector in the country is characterised by high competition. Aggressive pricing of high speed data plans by private sector company Reliance Jio has led to intense competition in the sector.

In its Abhinandan-151 prepaid plan, BSNL offers unlimited data during the entire validity period of 24 days, the company said on Twitter. After the consumer uses the first 1 GB of data in a day, the speed is reduced to 40 Kbps in the Abhinandan-151 prepaid plan, according to BSNL.

The company however did not mention the speed at which it will provide the 1GB of data every day during the validity of the plan.

"#BSNL launches an unbeatable plan, Abhinandan-151 #Plan. Get #Unlimited Calls, Unlimited Data and 100 SMS/day," BSNL said in a post on Twitter.

In a statement on June 20, BSNL said the plan voucher - Abhinandan-151 - was launched for a period of 90 days. Meant for its prepaid customers, BSNL's Abhinandan-151 provides “unlimited calls to any network while in roaming including Delhi & Mumbai”. The plan voucher is applicable for new connections, migration and validity extension with freebies, BSNL said in its June 20 statement.

BSNL has time and again made changes to its products to counter the intensifying competition in the telecom sector.

State-run BSNL is expected to post losses of Rs.14,202 crore for the financial year 2018-19, the government said this month.

In June, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad blamed stiff competition, high employee cost and no 4G services for the poor financial state of state-run BSNL and MTNL.