The first Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) service has been set up in India yesterday, as stated owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) joined hands with Chennai based company Aerovoyce and a multinational firm Plintron. The MVNO service is aimed at providing low-cost mobile network connectivity to BSNL’s customers.
AeroVoyce and its offerings:
Currently, Aerovoyce is offering its customers ultra-low affordable plans that are priced as low as Rs. 29 and Rs. 79 per month. The Rs. 29 plan, which is the cheapest plan available with Aerovoyce, its only applicable for users who make calls to other Aerovoyce users. On the other hand the Rs. 79 plan allows users to make voice calls to all other networks. Apart from this, the plan also provides 2GB of mobile internet data free every day.
Aerovoyce is owned by AdPay Mobile Payment India and is one among the seventy different companies that received a license to operate MVNO service in 2015. A pilot was conducted in late 2016 by Aerovoyce in all of BSNL’s operating network circles. Aerovoyce’s CEO and founder, Sivakumar Kuppusamy stated: “Our focus areas will be rural, tier-II and tier-III cities to bring the best affordable services in sync with the Digital India initiative”.
The company plans to further disrupt the low-cost telecom service business with the launch of its family plan. According to Aerovoyce, the family plan will allow an entire family access to mobile network connectivity at a cost of just Rs. 79 per month. Apart from this, the service will be bundled with Insurance Cover, 100% cash back on the purchase of a mobile device as well as IPTV. The plan is all set to launch on the 1st of August 2018.
BSNL’s plans for MVNO business in India:
BSNL‘s Chairman, Anupam Shrivastava said in a statement: “After the market disruption in 2016, we have started looking at other aspects such as satellite telephony, and MVNO is one of those areas”. With the launch of its MVNO services, BSNL seems to have put a dent of Reliance Jio’s hopes of expanding its rural network via its low-cost services. Aerovoyce and Plintron have both integrated their networks to function within BSNL’s spectrum. BSNL may not be done with this, as other operators such as Hughes Communication have indicated their interest in entering the virtual operator business jointly with the public sector giant.
The PSU expects the MVNO business segment to generate Rs. 1,000 crores in revenue annually. Market analysts, on the other hand, have predicted that this market has a potential of Rs. 2,800 crores in the country.
On the other hand, Plintron, which is also a Chennai based multinational company, that provides cloud communication services, has introduced a new branded service called eSIM4Things that is based on Internet of Things (IoT) based applications.
BSNL’s plans for the future:
The public sector telecom giant has also unveiled a robotic process automation (RPA) jointly in partnership with global audit firm Ernst & Young (EY). This platform has been designed to cater to corporates who can use it to file their income taxes.
“BSNL is a very agile organisation and the RPA would lead to benefit of Rs 300 crores in cash flows,” said Prashant Singhal, EY’s telecom practice leader. He also stressed that the process will improving efficiency and will not replace jobs. Instead, it will help to improve the ease and efficiency at which taxes are filed. It will be monitoring customer’s tax deduction by looking into the data across all of BSNL’s operating circles. Currently, one such bot has been deployed on BSNL’s network and an Analyst from EY expects that this number would grow to at least 10 by 2019.