The hottest new phone on the market is here. No, it’s not an iPhone, or a Samsung, nor a Nothing, or Everything, or Xiaomi or any other brand. This new phone has been recently launched by none other than our own humble BSNL.
Now, given that it is a phone by India’s Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), one would think its price would be somewhere around what a Nokia 105 costs, that is, around Rs. 1000 to 1600. But nope, because this baby costs a whole whopping Rs. 1.3 lakhs.
For reference, this price range is what you’d pay for something like the iPhone 17 Pro. It is more expensive than most premium Android flagships on the Indian market today. Also, it can’t be bought by just any other random person, because you need explicit permission from the Government of India just to own one.
This is because this BSNL phone is no ordinary phone, but a satellite phone, which can work even when every single mobile tower within a hundred kilometres has been destroyed, flooded, or never existed in the first place.
What Is This New BSNL Phone?
BSNL announced the availability of its satellite phone via its official X/Twitter account on July 9, 2026, stating, “When conventional mobile networks can’t reach, the BSNL Satellite Phone keeps you connected. Designed for challenging environments, making it an ideal solution for Defence, Maritime, Disaster Response, Mining, Remote Operations and Adventure Travel.”
Listing out its features, BSNL wrote that the phone has “satellite connectivity, voice calls anywhere, Emergency Support, and long battery life.”
The phone is priced at Rs 1,34,166 inclusive of all applicable taxes. Interestingly though, the phone is not available on any e-commerce platform or standard mobile retailer.
If one is interested, the post tells them to go to their nearest BSNL office or call a dedicated helpline number. One user did comment under the post that, “As always. No one is responding to the above Given Number.”
The device was developed in partnership with Inmarsat, a global satellite communications provider. BSNL is using India’s own INMARSAT satellite cluster to enable the service. INMARSAT was founded by ISRO in 2010 to help the country’s most powerful infrastructure communicate with a constellation of geostationary satellites.
The handset runs on Inmarsat’s satellite network and supports both voice calls and SMS. It is not a data device in the broadband sense, and it will not be streaming anything. What it will do is connect one to another human being when a person is somewhere that no mobile tower can reach.
Phones like these can be quite useful in emergencies like floods, wildfires, and up in snowy and remote mountain regions. Now, BSNL has actually been offering its Global Satellite Phone Service (GSPS) since January 1, 2018, as confirmed in an official Department of Telecommunications statement from February 2026.
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The high price may surprise many users, but this is not a regular mobile phone meant for everyday use. The handset is specially built for mission-critical communication.
The fact that it provides satellite connectivity independent of mobile towers, voice calling from remote locations, an emergency SOS function, a rugged build designed for harsh environments, and a battery built for extended use far from a charging point makes it a very useful feature for grave and dire situations.
The cost of satellite handsets globally has historically remained in this range and above, and the reasons are structural rather than arbitrary. Satellite communication hardware must be designed to transmit signals not to a tower a few hundred metres away but to a geostationary satellite sitting approximately 35,786 kilometres above the equator.
The radio components required to achieve this, the antenna design, the signal amplification, the power systems, the ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions like extreme temperatures, water, shocks, vibrations, and dust and survive in them, are very different from what a standard mobile handset requires.
Thus, they cannot be manufactured at the same volume or with the same supply chain economies that have driven consumer smartphone prices down over the last decade.
BSNL’s postpaid satellite phone plans are priced at Rs 3,500, Rs 5,835, and Rs 11,670 per month for government and commercial users, respectively, offering 16, 30, and 60 minutes of free talk time or SMS per plan. Once free minutes are exhausted, government entities are charged Rs 18 per minute and commercial users Rs 25 per minute.
For prepaid government use, BSNL charges Rs 3,500 per month with 20 minutes of free talk time, or Rs 38,500 per year with 240 minutes. Commercial prepaid plans run at Rs 5,835 monthly with 30 minutes of free talk time, or Rs 64,185 annually with 360 minutes.
Additional top-up vouchers are available in denominations from Rs 200 to Rs 10,000.
Basically, this is not a device for someone who wants to Instagram their trekking photos from a ridge in Himachal Pradesh.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The New Indian Express, India Today, The Economic Times
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: BSNL, BSNL new phone, BSNL news, BSNL new phone launch, BSNL satellite phone, BSNL new phone price, bsnl new phone satellite, bsnl new phone launch price, Satellite phones, Satellite phones india
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