New Delhi: A tussle has broken out in India’s telecom sector over Bharti Airtel’s 5G “Priority Postpaid” plans, with rivals Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea seeking regulatory consultations and government clearance before such services are rolled out commercially, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The debate centres on whether 5G network slicing – which allows telecom operators to create dedicated fast lanes for premium users – discriminates against regular prepaid users by degrading their service quality in a market where network capacity and spectrum remain constrained.
It has also revived questions around whether such “fast lanes” are compatible with India’s net-neutrality principles, which prohibit internet providers from blocking, throttling, discriminating against, or prioritising lawful internet traffic.
“There is no experience degradation for any customer on Airtel due to this feature,” Airtel said in its response to department of telecommunications (DoT) after it sought comments from all operators. “Current 5G capacity utilization on the Airtel network is only 38 percent, and only 4% of this is used by postpaid customers. The network has enough headroom for enhanced experience without degrading any customer.”
Airtel said it is "ready to be explicitly accountable for quality-of-service (QoS) benchmarks and to work closely with the Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) and DoT for discussing appropriate guardrails that enable innovation while safeguarding consumer interest and net-neutrality principles”.
Vodafone Idea, however, said the service is discriminatory and could come at the expense of prepaid subscribers, the first person cited above said on the condition of anonymity.
Reliance Jio, while avoiding direct comments on Airtel's specific implementation, said the “launch of such products should be done in concurrence with and post consultation with the department.”
“As long as general Internet Access Service available to users is not degraded in quality or curtailed in availability, and no content-based differential charging is being applied, the network slicing feature in 5G Standalone (SA) network slicing will be fully consistent with the aforementioned Net Neutrality regulatory provisions,” Reliance Jio said.
On Tuesday, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology held a meeting with DoT and Trai officials on quality of service and consumer protection in the telecom sector, with a focus on net neutrality.
"The government of India and Trai decide on the network licensing. 90% of the networking customers are pre-paid while 10% are post-paid, and the companies want to give better benefits to the post-paid ones... We will undertake 2-3 more meetings on this,” Nishikant Dubey, chairman of the committee told ANI.
Queries emailed to Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio did not elicit any response till press time.
In 2020, Trai raised concerns over premium telecom plans offered by Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel that promised priority network benefits to high-paying users. Trai had said such offerings could create a “class within class” by giving better network treatment to select subscribers, potentially disadvantageous to ordinary users. Both operators eventually withdrew those services.
Vodafone Idea said the new 5G slicing service by Airtel is similar to the RedX 4G postpaid plans, which the former withdrew in 2020 after Trai’s intervention, the person cited above said, adding that Trai and the government need to do thorough consultations and not allow anti-competitive activities.
Reliance Jio also suggested that, if needed, the competent government authority can examine the specific technical arrangements, network configuration parameters, QoS thresholds, and service-level agreement terms governing the network slicing-based service offerings to assess conformance with net neutrality principles and the applicable regulatory framework.
Jio is looking for regulatory clarity before commercially launching its specialised use cases from network slicing. The company has built 5G network slices for gaming, internet of things (IoT), enterprise, and mission-critical services.
Analysts and industry executives say the government and the regulator will have to revisit the 2017 net-neutrality rules, given the risks for the digital divide in the country may be greater because of the country’s heavy dependence on mobile internet and relatively constrained spectrum availability per user.
Responding to concerns around network capacity, Airtel said “Prepaid and other non-priority traffic continues to have additional headroom to roughly 60 percent of total capacity, making it clear that Priority Postpaid does not and cannot cause degradation for prepaid users.”
Airtel serves approximately 29 million postpaid and 344 million prepaid customers. It said prepaid subscribers account for nearly 92% of its mobile business and 88% of its revenue.
The telecom operator said network slicing was currently “the only monetisation use case at scale on 5G mobility” and that its offering did not involve any content-based discrimination.