Vodafone Idea pitches for 'equitable, inclusive access' to all customers

No 3 carrier wades into net-neutrality debate triggered by Airtel's priority postpaid plans

India’s No 3 carrier Vodafone Idea (Vi) on Thursday called for creation of an equitable internet keeping consumer interest in focus, while flagging preferential services for a set of users, alluding to the priority postpaid plans based on 5G slicing offered by Bharti Airtel. 

The Aditya Birla group-backed telecom services provider waded into the ongoing debate on the plans violating net neutrality norms, but steered clear of calling out rival carrier Airtel. It is the only telco that has officially comm­ented on the issue — whether the priorisation model potentially creates a differential internet experience between postpaid and prepaid consumers — so far. 

 

“India’s digital growth has been built on the foundation of affordability and connectivity for all. At Vi, we strongly believe that every customer deserves a fair and consistent network expe­rience. Offering preferential speeds or services based on user profile, raises questions around equity and principles of an equal digital ecosystem,” Vi’s Chief Marketing Officer Avneesh Khosla said in a statement. 

“For India to continue its digital growth, even as the technology advances, it is important for innovation and monetisation models to keep the interests of all customers paramount , be transparent and most of all remain inclusive,” he added. 

The statement comes a day after Nishikant Dubey, head of the parliamentary standing committee on commun­ications and information technology and a Member of Parliament from the ruling BJP, stated that the committee was examining concerns related to Airtel’s priority postpaid plans after meeting with officials from the Department of Telecom and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).  While the panel examines whether the service violates net neutrality rules of non-discrimination, it is also learnt to be looking into whether the quality of service of prepaid users was getting degraded and whether differentiated access is being offered by digital platforms to users for a premium. 

Last week, Airtel upgraded all its postpaid customers to the plans offering a dependable network despite heavy conge­stion. Calling it ‘priority postpaid,’ Airtel said it was using 5G slicing which was a globally adopted practice and did not violate net neutrality norms, fully compliant with regulations issued by Trai and the Indian government. 

Airtel Priority Postpaid plans start at ₹449 for a single user, and can go up to ₹1,749 for five users or a family, with unlimited data and calling. The individual plan offers free access to the Airtel Xstream Play OTT app, Adobe Express Premium and 100 GB of cloud storage. Higher priced plans offer access to Amazon Prime, Jio Hotstar, Apple TV, and Apple Music. The highest tier also bundles Netflix with these offerings. Airtel’s current and priority postpaid plans are similarly priced and offer

same speeds. 

The Sunil Mittal-backed company has offered to share live network data with authorities, and be accountable for quality-of-service benchmarks. 

In its submission to the Parliamentary panel and to the DoT, Airtel has said its service is content-neutral and involves no blocking, throttling, preferential treatment, or zero-rating. 

Vi is learnt to have shared with the panel that 5G slicing and preferential service plans should be put on hold until there is clear regulatory guidance. Reliance Jio, in submissions to the committee, had refrained from commenting on Airtel’s plans per se but stated that 5G slicing was a standardised technology capability of 5G SA networks that can cater to diverse public-interest connectivity requirements, which was also permitted by existing regulations. The carrier is learnt to have said that using different slices for different business class or verticals meet the net neutrality requir­ements but differential charging based preferential slicing within any class should be done only if it is justified under transparent, application-agnostic, technically justified traffic management requirements. 

Both Airtel and Jio have 5G SA or standard architecture networks operational across markets in India, that supports 5G slicing, while VI has launched 5G NSA or non-standalone architecture network that technically cannot support 5G slicing, according to experts in the sector. To be sure, Jio's network has been SA from the beginning of launch while Airtel has introduced SA over the past year or so. Experts also note that 5G slicing was a globally accepted practice with carriers in countries like the US, UK, South Korea and Singapore offering plans for specific use cases. 

The development comes at a time when Indian carriers are looking at ways other than tariff hikes to monetise their existing customer base, including nudging customers from prepaid to postpaid services. About 94-95 per cent of India’s 1.2 billion mobile phone customers use prepaid services and make up for nearly three-fourths of the industry revenue, while a small portion of postpaid consumers make up for the rest.