In a year when smartphone users across the country enjoyed cheap data after major telecom players slashed their prices, BSNL’s Karnataka Circle witnessed a huge leap in mobile data consumption by its subscribers. “The mobile data consumption used to be around 25 terabytes per day a year ago. Now it’s a minimum of 70 terabytes per day. It is more during weekends and holidays,” said Principal General Manager (PGM) of Mysuru Telecom District, K.L. Jairam.
After other telecoms slashed data prices, Mr. Jairam, who had served as PGM of Bengaluru Telecom District till about a year ago, said BSNL had to come up with special tariff vouchers, with packages offering 3 GB and 2 GB data per day at a very cheap price after major telecom players slashed their data prices. He was referring to the price war among telecom players with the entry of Reliance Jio last year.
The price of mobile data, which used to be around ₹150 for every GB, dropped to less than ₹10, paving the way for huge rise in its consumption, he said. The consumption from fixed broadband connections is generally 10 times more than mobile data consumption.
“Most applications don’t need an Internet speed more than 2 to 4 megabits per second while BSNL provides a speed ranging from 7 to 8 megabits per second”, he said.
However, the market share of BSNL mobile connections in Karnataka is 13.95%, with a total of 69.76 lakh customers as of March 2017. Also, he said BSNL had commissioned WiFi hotspots at 343 locations across the State.
Optical fibre cable to gram panchayats
Under the national optical fibre network (NOFN) project, BSNL has laid a total of 11,177 kms of optic fibre cable covering 5,605 gram panchayats out of the total 6,092 gram panchayats.
