After seeing great success from private telecom operators Airtel and Idea Cellular on mobile internet sharing, the government owned telecom operator BSNL has followed the path and introduced data sharing facility for pan-India Prepaid mobile customers.
Now BSNL prepaid customers can share his/her 3G/2G data usage from any data pack with four of his friends or family who is also using BSNL mobile services.
One can subscribe to any community data pack that is equal to 150 or more from his/her account balance through BSNL web self-care portal [bsnlszprepaid.com]. The user can create a group account under ‘Friends & Family’ section of BSNL web self-care portal with maximum four BSNL number. On creating the group, main account holder also needs to choose the community 3G/2G data pack to be used within the group.
BSNL Data Sharing features
- Community data pack allows sharing of data benefits among 5 persons (between a parent and four members).
- Minimum data STVs subscribing to be Rs 150 excluding unlimited STVs.
- Subscribing to community data pack and adding of child accounts can be done only through BSNL web self-care portal.
- The amount for data STVs will be debited directly from the main account balance of master subscriber.
- One can add and delete the child accounts via BSNL web self-care portal.
- Both the parent subscriber and the child subscriber can recharge his/her account with their own individual Data STVs. In this case, if a child subscriber is having any other data STVs subscribed to his/her own account, the community data pack will come into effect only after his/her own data STVs get exhausted.
- Child account will not have any access to view his/her shared data usage.
- BSNL data sharing facility is completely free.
BSNL new community data STVs
To promote the service, BSNL has introduced an array of exclusive data sharing data STVs and combo plans for pan-India prepaid customers.
The lowest data STV under community charging scheme comes for Rs 173 which includes 1.2 GB of 3G or 2G data benefits for a period of 18 days and the highest plan include 21 GB of 3G or 2G data benefits with a validity of 90 days, priced at Rs 2013. After the free data benefits, users will be charged 3paise per 10KB data usage.
| BSNL 3G / 2G Prepaid data offers for Data Sharing facility | MRP (Rs) | Validity (Days) | Data charges after free usage | Data charges in Rs/MB for APN ‘bsnlstream |
| 1.2 GB 3G / 2G Data | 173 | 18 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 1.2 GB 3G / 2G Data | 233 | 28 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 1.2 GB 3G / 2G Data + Rs 100 Talk Time | 263 | 14 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 2.4 GB 3G / 2G Data | 323 | 28 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 3.2 GB 3G / 2G Data | 493 | 60 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 2.2 GB 3G / 2G Data + Rs 100 Talk Time | 553 | 60 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 5.2 GB 3G / 2G Data | 663 | 30 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 7 GB 3G / 2G Data | 923 | 60 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 10 GB 3G / 2G Data | 1223 | 60 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 21 GB 3G / 2G Data | 2013 | 90 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
| 15 GB 3G / 2G Data + Unlimited Local/STD/Roaming on-net OG Voice calls + 500 minutes free Local/STD/Roaming off-net OG Voice call | 3199 | 30 | 3ps/10KB | 0.25 |
Currently, the BSNL data sharing facility is active for users in the south zone with effect from 6th April 2016 and will be implemented to other zones in the coming weeks.