Offering freebies during festival season is one of the marketing strategies of telecom operators in India use to connect with their customers. BSNL (News - Alert), India’s largest telecom operator by revenue, for example, announced it will launch free call line identification (CLI)-based dial-up Internet service for two months.

 

The dial-up Internet access will be available from September 1 to October 31, for BSNL’s public switched telephone network (PSTN) customers. Besides dial-up Internet services, the government-owned BSNL offers wireline, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) mobile, Internet, broadband, carrier service, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) virtual private network (VPN), Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and intelligent network (IN) services.

 

“We have launched this offer with the primary objective of increasing the Internet penetration in India to bridge the rural-urban digital divide in the information, communication and technology (ICT) sector,” said  Anil Jain, deputy director general for BSNL’s broadband division, in a statement. “Dial-up is the cheapest and the best means of providing internet services in Class B (News - Alert) and Class C cities in India.”

 

BSNL launched its CLI-based Internet access service, NetOne, in June 2003. It is one of the first successful franchisee models in the country. NetOne Internet services are available in 270 Class B and 2,000 Class C cities and towns in India. Currently, NetOne services are used by three million customers.

 

BSNL has partnered with Ahmedabad (India)-based Elitecore Technologies (News - Alert), the provider of CRESTEL, a convergent billing framework for next generation voice video and data services, to support this instant Internet service.

 

Elitecore Technologies, which serves customers in Asia, South East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, is the franchisee for BSNL. NetOne Internet service allows BSNL’s telephone subscribers to access Internet services without formal process of registration and renewals.

 

“Elitecore CRESTEL billing solution converges the innovative NetOne offer with BSNL’s legacy telecom systems and can scale millions of users simultaneously, CRESTEL not only ensured a single Internet and telecom bill to the subscriber, but also provided a complete range of services for revenue and customer management,” said Nikhil Jain, COO and director at Elitecore Technologies, in a statement.