Regulator likely to take benign view of Bharti Airtel postpaid plan

Trai is inclined to view Airtel's 5G priority postpaid plans as compliant with net-neutrality norms, while continuing to monitor their impact on users

India’s telecom regulator is veering towards the view that Bharti Airtel’s priority postpaid plans do not constitute a violation of net-neutrality norms, according to people aware of the development. That said, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is, however, continuing to monitor the implementation of the plans across markets, they said. 

Trai’s examination had found that the plans being offered to postpaid users through 5G slicing did not potentially degrade the quality of service to or the experience of prepaid users, said two people in the know. 

“The issue was whether the plan was adversely affecting the quality of the remaining 5G customers, and, principally, that does not seem to be the case,” a person close to the deliberations said, asking not to be named since the discussions were internal.

“Net-neutrality rules come into effect when there’s discrimination based on content, which is not the case here,” said another person, also requesting anonymity. “The rules specify that there has to be discrimination between customers of the same class, and so far, there’s no discrepancy,” this person added. 

The first person also indicated that since Trai had ascertained that the plans did not differentiate on the basis on content, pricing or speed, the net-neutrality rules in place since 2018 were unlikely to be revisited. “Some global markets, like the UK, have allowed discrimination based on content, which is why there has been debate on reviewing net-neutrality rules, but that is not the case in India,” the person added. 

Queries sent to Trai did not elicit a response as of Monday evening press time.    

Meanwhile, one of the persons said that bundled content being offered by existing postpaid and prepaid plans by all telecom players were driven by prevailing practices of marketing, customer acquisition and customer retention.   

Bharti Airtel had launched its priority postpaid plans on May 19, under which it upgraded all its 29-30 million postpaid customers, offering a dependable network despite heavy congestion. The plans came under the scanner of the Department of Telecom (DoT), Trai, and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology over concerns that the postpaid customers’ experience would be at the cost of prepaid customers, and that the plans came with bundled content, potentially violating net neutrality. 

Rival Vodafone Idea also flagged Airtel’s new 5G slicing-based plans, and took to social media last week with the slogan, “Sabko equal network ka vaada and everyone is a priority”. 

Airtel defended the plans, maintaining that they were fully compliant with the regulations. It offered to share live network data with the authorities and be accountable for quality-of-service benchmarks. 

“Airtel’s implementation is fully compliant with Trai and DoT norms. It is content-neutral and involves no blocking, throttling, preferential treatment, or zero-rating,” Airtel told the government. The service, it said, did not throttle or degrade the experience for its prepaid customers, who form 92 per cent of its 368 million customer base in India and contribute 88 per cent of its revenue.   

The Sunil Bharti Mittal-backed telecom services provider has also advocated the 5G slicing technology as the only proven large-scale monetisation model, which is also foundational to the future 6G networks. 

As a technology, 5G slicing refers to a method of creating segments within a telecom carrier’s network for specialised use, such as fast lanes with low latency or dedicated lanes ensuring all time connectivity. Services based on 5G slicing are prevalent in markets such as Singapore, the United States, the UK, and Malaysia. 

The company had argued that its overall 5G capacity utilisation was around 38 per cent during busy hours. Within that, postpaid traffic accounted for only about 4 per cent, which, after introducing a virtual “tunnel” (slice) for priority postpaid, might increase to around 6 per cent, it said. 

Queries sent to Bharti Airtel did not elicit a reply as of Monday evening. 

Airtel’s priority postpaid plans start from ₹449 for a single user, and go up to ₹1,749 for five users or a family, offering unlimited data and calling. The individual plan offers free access to Airtel Xstream Play, its OTT app, Adobe Express Premium and 100 GB of cloud storage. Higher costing plans add access to Amazon Prime, Jio Hotstar, Apple TV, Apple Music, with the highest tier offering all of these, plus Netflix.