Bharti Airtel‘s launch of Priority Postpaid on Tuesday, a service promising a superior and more consistent network experience through 5G network slicing technology, may have reopened a debate that the telecom sector believed had largely been settled a decade ago.
While the company’s latest offering does not appear to violate existing net neutrality regulations, industry executives and analysts say it could once again bring into focus questions around preferential treatment in Internet access — this time not on the basis of content, but on the basis of customer class.
Airtel’s priority postpaid
On Tuesday, Airtel announced Priority Postpaid, which uses 5G slicing technology to provide postpaid users with what it called a more stable and dependable network experience, particularly during periods of congestion. Existing postpaid users will automatically receive the benefit, while prepaid users seeking access to the service would have to migrate to postpaid plans.
The announcement comes nearly a decade after the telecom industry found itself at the centre of a major net neutrality controversy involving initiatives such as Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel Zero. Those programmes were eventually discontinued after widespread criticism that they created preferential access to selected Internet services and applications, prompting the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to introduce the Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016.
The regulations prohibited telecom operators from charging differential tariffs on the basis of content. The objective was to ensure that all Internet traffic was treated equally and that operators did not become gatekeepers determining which applications or websites users could access at lower cost.
However, Airtel’s latest offering highlights how technological developments have changed the nature of the debate.
Unlike earlier mobile network technologies, standalone 5G allows operators to create multiple virtual networks, or slices, over the same physical infrastructure. These slices can be customised to deliver different quality parameters depending on user requirements. In Airtel’s case, network resources can be dynamically allocated to prioritised customers to provide a more reliable experience even during high-traffic situations.
What do Industry execs say?
Industry executives said that unlike Free Basics or Airtel Zero, there is no discrimination against specific applications or websites. Users continue to access the same Internet content regardless of whether they are on a priority plan or not.
The issue, however, is that differentiation could now move from content to customer category.
“Current regulations explicitly prohibit content-based discrimination. But technology is creating scenarios where operators can potentially differentiate the quality of service based on user class without directly violating those rules,” said an analyst.
For instance, during periods of network congestion, a premium customer may experience more stable connectivity, smoother video streaming and lower latency, while a standard user could potentially experience slower service. While operators maintain that prioritised services do not degrade the experience for ordinary users, analysts said that prioritisation is inherently relative.
The matter also gains significance because of its potential commercial implications.
For Airtel, and for the broader telecom industry, prepaid customers account for roughly 95% of the mobile subscriber base. Any ability to create differentiated quality-based offerings could provide operators with another route to migrate users toward higher-paying plans and improve average revenue per user (Arpu).
“If customers perceive a meaningful difference in network quality, some users could increasingly see postpaid migration as a way to secure a better experience rather than merely a different billing relationship,” an analyst said.
So far, both Trai and the department of telecommunications (DoT) have indicated that network slicing in itself does not amount to a violation of net neutrality principles as long as standard Internet services are not degraded. However, Airtel’s launch could potentially push regulators to examine whether emerging 5G-enabled offerings create new forms of discrimination that existing regulations did not envisage.