State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd on Thursday offered a hefty discount on all types of telecom services, including lowering the registration charges on a basic telephone from the existing Rs 1,000 to just Re 1.

"The discounts are for a limited period. We are sure that our millions of existing and new subscribers will be benefited immensely from this festive offer," BSNL CMD A K Sinha told reporters New Delhi.

For the cellular segment, BSNL announced huge discounts on pre-paid recharge coupons, wherein a subscriber would get four recharge coupons at a cost of three.

For the post-paid connections, activation charges have been waived off, Sinha said.

The discounts are valid for a period between 23-70 days or from Oct 22 to December 31.

The Corporation has also announced waiver of installation charges of Rs 600 on every new basic phone connection.

BSNL would be spending up to Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) on the various festive offers.

In order to popularise Internet penetration for the broadband, it announced reduction in access rates by up to 60 per cent besides lowering the rental for ISDN lines to Rs 400 a month and for an ISDN PRI connection to Rs 1,750 a month from Rs 5,000.

BSNL has announced free Virtual Calling Cards of different denominations for subscribers paying their bills regularly.