To celebrate Republic Day 2019, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has released a new pack for its prepaid customers in India. The new pack is priced at Rs 269 and comes with a validity of 26 days. The pack rolled out by state-owned telecom operator also offers 2.6GB of data and 2,600 minutes of free calling. Along with this, the new pack offers 260 free SMSes.

The plan, however, is being offered only for a couple of days. BSNL's new plan will be applicable from January 26 to January 31.  

The new BSNL pack comes days after the telecom revised its Rs 99 pack that is curated to offer unlimited voice calling benefits to prepaid users. Instead of 26 days of validity that it used to offer earlier, the Rs 99 pack now offers 24 days.

On Tuesday, BSNL partnered with French company Be-Bound to offer data connectivity through SMS in areas where there is no Internet connectivity or signal breaks. "We were trying to get SMS based data service technology on our own but learnt that Be-Bound has already developed this technology and has been given patent for it. This technology is very good to support operations of apps when there is no Internet connection," BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Shrivastava told PTI after signing the pact.

The technology will be embedded in mobile apps. The app will send command to Be-Bound server in case it does not get data connectivity for SMS-based connectivity.

"Be-Bound server will facilitate SMS connectivity after getting command from the app. The app will also send SMS from user's account because for connectivity we need to send sms to and fro. We know that there is limit of 100 SMS per day per subscriber which is sufficient for this service," Be-Bound Country Manager Harkaran Singh Sachdev said.

The company has commercially launched the service in France and is running a pilot in African countries as well.

"We are in talks with some of the apps and seeing traction from firms in BFSI segment, logistics and others. We have done proof of concept with some of them and now soon convert them into commercial agreement," Sachdev said.

(With PTI inputs)