BSNL Announces India's First Virtual Network Operator (VNO) Partnership

The Indian telecom sector is in the midst of an upheaval with operators looking to make more than revenue fifty-fifty as tariffs continue to drib for users. The Department of Telecom had issued its guidelines on "virtual network operators" nearly 2 years agone so operators could license their services to smaller players.

There has hardly been whatever activity in the niche since the DoT's annunciation dating back to May 2016, just the state-run operator BSNL has at present announced Republic of india's start two virtual network operators for consumers.

Virtual network operators (VNO) are typically smaller companies which do not own telecom infrastructure themselves but buy services such as bandwidth for data services also equally minutes and texts. These services are bought or licensed from bigger operators, which in this example is BSNL.

To clarify, BSNL is not the first operator to offer VNO services. Reliance Communication, afterwards shutting down its consumer services, started offering B2B services as VNO via Reliance Jio. This makes BNSL India'southward first operator to offer VNO services in the consumer domain.

BSNL's New Initiative to Make Mobile Usage More Affordable, Widely Accessible — Anupam Shrivastava, CMD, BSNL; Courtesy: Twitter/BSNL Bharat

The smaller operators which accept partnered with BSNL as VNOs are AdPay (under AEROVOYCE) and Plintron. AdPay is a provider of services like Mobile Payments, broadband internet, VAS etc. The company will focus on providing services in tier-Two and tier-3 towns and besides aims to connect all the rural areas of India to a telecom network.

Meanwhile, the other operator i.eastward. Plintron will offer services defended to the Internet of Things (IoT), with a special make eSIM4Things. The services will include SIM and connectivity offerings for smart IoT devices and also aid in creating and improving IoT applications for end users.

The biggest benefit of a VNO is that it allows service providers of all sizes and calibration to deed every bit telecom operators. They need not fulfill the requirements for a bank guarantee of Rs. 100 crore which a telco is liable to pay when they apply for a spectrum license. This means that operators tin can offering more financially advisable and attractive deals to users.

This ways that the VNOs chartered by BSNL can offer plans at even more effective prices than what the current telecom industry is offering. Moreover, these plans can be modified based on the region, assuasive VNOs to target and woo more customers.