Bharti Airtel on Tuesday announced a significant change to the company’s telecom network infrastructure, implementing a new slicing technology that will prioritise the 5G experience for postpaid customers. All new and existing postpaid customers on Airtel’s network will gradually be able to take advantage of this new network slicing methodology, as long as their phone supports 5G SA, or standalone networks. This move raises questions about the resulting experiences for other users on the network, including millions of prepaid users, and reignites the net neutrality debate.
Network slicing technology subdivides a singular 5G network into multiple virtual networks, unknown to the user. Each of these virtual networks, called slices, essentially creates different lanes for traffic from a specific subset of users, devices, and based on network congestion. For instance, if the network is heavily used at a concert venue, 5G speeds and call quality suffer across the user base. With slicing, Airtel hopes to prioritise premium postpaid users when the network is stretched.
“Priority Postpaid is our latest innovation powered by the 5G slicing technology. It provides a superior, more reliable, and dependable experience to our customers, whether they are attending a client call in traffic, or streaming at a packed concert, or booking a cab in a crowded market,” Airtel CEO Shashwat Sharma said.
Slicing requires a 5G standalone (SA) core, a key upgrade seems close to completion for Airtel’s network. HT can note that at the same location and on the same Airtel Black plan, an Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max can enable 5G Standalone from the settings, but an iPhone 17 Pro Max and an iPhone 17e still cannot.
Faisal Kawoosa, chief analyst at research firm Techarc, tells HT that this is “a strategy by the operators to allure more subscribers to switch to postpaid” and warns that this may be a “bandwagon effect” where telecom companies believe a consumer buying premium smartphones may be willing to pay premium prices as well. The hope is, with the reducing gap between prepaid and postpaid average spends, the latter offers more customer loyalty.
According to official figures, Airtel’s average revenue per user (ARPU) stands at ₹257, a ₹2 decline over the previous quarter. Reliance Jio has reported ARPU of ₹214 (up from ₹213.7 in the previous quarter) while Vi’s registered ₹190 ARPU (which is up from ₹175 a year ago). This is a key metric for telecom companies to assess the contours of its user base, and overall profitability.
This raises questions about whether Airtel’s Priority Postpaid violates the net neutrality rules set by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). These rules, finalised in 2018, are built on three key principles — no discriminatory pricing (such as different tariffs based on content or apps used), no blocking or throttling of specific websites, apps or services, and no commercial prioritisation to speed up traffic for certain content or applications. However,
With Airtel Priority Postpaid, the telecom company can argue that it is not violating any of the three directives — pricing of postpaid plans doesn’t change. However, the argument could be that prioritising connectivity for postpaid users on a network as against prepaid users, would subsequently benefit apps being used. These could include Airtel’s own Xstream Play streaming app, as well as bundled subscriptions including Amazon Prime, JioHotstar and Adobe Express.
Network slicing, as a method, is deployed extensively by telecom networks in the US, UK, Singapore and Malaysia, as well as Finland, China, Germany and South Korea.
For instance, Singapore’s Singtel has a ‘priority’ plan for consumers where slicing promises stable internet speeds for these subscribers in high usage locations. Operators in many countries also use slicing for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) on networks, so that home and office broadband on 5G networks delivers speeds similar to wired broadband. Airtel and Jio offer FWA broadband products in India, for homes and offices.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) believes 5G network slicing is a transformative technology. “We welcome the introduction of 5G network slicing capabilities in India, marking an important milestone in the evolution of next-generation digital infrastructure,” notes Lt. Gen. Dr. S.P. Kochhar, Director General of COAI, adding that this reflects “rapid progress of the country’s telecom ecosystem”.
Kawoosa believes that deploying network resources in favour of postpaid users shouldn’t make the experience worse for prepaid users. “While a premium product or service must offer elevated experience, it does not mean that the others will suffer,” he notes.
“Network slicing is creating a virtual network subset, a slice from the same physical network which has a different level of privileges, service level agreement, authorisations, provisioning, and other factors defining a telecom network or service.,” he adds, calling this a “toll road allowing a certain cohort of drivers to drive faster than others”.
In an earnings call in April, Reliance Jio had noted plans for a ‘premium 5G’ service. Anshuman Thakur, head of strategy at Reliance Jio Infocomm had said, “On the product side, the 5G premium services with our stack, we can offer. Now, some of this is being done on a trial basis. We need to ensure that we are fully regulatory compliant, but these products are ready for the market.”
While Airtel insists the introduction of network slicing brings India at par with other mature telecom networks worldwide, regulators may be taking a closer look at this proposition in the coming days.
