India’s telecom regulator is unlikely to find Bharti Airtel’s recently launched ‘priority’ postpaid plans—based on 5G slicing technology—in breach of the country’s net-neutrality framework, according to officials aware of the matter.
However, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will continue to scrutinize whether the same affects the service quality for non-priority users, these officials told Mint on condition of anonymity.
“As per a preliminary analysis done by Trai in the busy hour, before and after network slicing on Airtel’s network, currently, it has not found any adverse impact on service quality of Airtel’s 2G, 4G and other 5G users,” one of the officials cited above said on the condition of anonymity.
The official added that the regulator will continue to monitor the tariff plans, service quality and seek information as needed.
Under the framework adopted by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the core principle of net neutrality mandates that any licensee providing Internet access services shall not engage in discrimination, restriction, or interference in the treatment of content, including practices like blocking, degrading, slowing down or granting preferential speeds.
This rule prohibits discrimination based on the sender or receiver, the specific protocols being used, or the user’s equipment.
A second official said the launch of 5G slicing is permitted under the current norms. “Based on the Telecom Tariff Order, 1999, the operators are also allowed to offer different speeds of internet access under different prepaid and postpaid plans,” this official said, adding that no changes to the existing regulations are required.
The regulator also seems convinced of the spectrum availability with Airtel for such slicing, but could seek more information as it continues to examine the service quality, the second official said.
While evaluating Airtel’s priority plan, Trai has also analysed 11 other countries such as the US, Mexico, Singapore, the UK, and Malaysia, where telcos have launched retail plans to offer 5G priority services, the first official cited above said.
Industry reactions
On its part, Bharti Airtel said there is no experience degradation for any Airtel customer due to this feature. “We would never allow any degradation of QoS (quality of service) for our prepaid base,” the operator said in a letter dated 25 May to the DoT that has been seen by Mint.
Airtel’s rival Vodafone Idea has opposed the priority plan, and Reliance Jio has said such slicing is acceptable under certain conditions, without specifically referring to Airtel’s offering.
Vodafone Idea said in a statement last week that “offering preferential speeds or services based on user profile raises questions around equity and principles of an equal digital ecosystem”.
Reliance Jio, told the DoT and a Parliament panel in a letter dated 25 May seen by Mint that existing rules permit network slicing-based service offerings, although differential charging should be allowed only under transparent and technically justified traffic-management requirements.
Queries sent to the Trai and DoT on Monday did not elicit any response till the press time.
What sparked the debate
The debate stems from Airtel’s launch of its Priority Postpaid service on 19 May using 5G slicing technology, which allows operators to divide network capacity into virtual lanes for different categories of users, including enterprise clients and priority customers.
The move revived net-neutrality concerns, with experts arguing that premium fast lanes for some users could leave ordinary prepaid users on more congested parts of the network because of India’s limited mobile internet capacity.
Some policy experts and industry observers argue that Airtel’s offering has exposed a regulatory grey area that India’s net neutrality framework was never designed to address. While the current rules largely focus on preventing discrimination based on content, applications, or websites, they contend that 5G network slicing introduces a new form of differentiation based on subscriber class.
They said the existing rules such as Telecom Tariff Order 1999 came before 5G and were framed largely with wireline services in mind.
Regulatory gaps
“India’s net neutrality framework permitted user-based classification primarily for wireline enterprise and B2B services — and deliberately so, because wireline capacity can be expanded by laying more fibre or adding bandwidth, making degradation of other users far less likely. Wireless is fundamentally different: spectrum is a finite, shared, licensed resource,” said Parag Kar, an independent telecom analyst.
According to Kar, 5G network slicing now makes retail subscriber tiering commercially viable for the first time, but neither Trai nor DoT anticipated this during the 2020 Traffic Management Practices consultation, where Trai explicitly concluded 5G needed no separate regulatory treatment and no operator raised subscription-tier prioritisation as a use case. The result is a framework with no definitions, no pre-approved guardrails, and no independent monitoring body.
Rahul Sundaram, partner at IndiaLaw LLP said, wider public consultations are necessary before permitting network slicing based services commercially. “The rules are incomplete. The TTO 1999 prohibits arbitrary subscriber classification, and while telcos will argue postpaid-versus-prepaid tiering is commercially rational, consumer advocates will argue it is arbitrary on a shared spectrum-constrained network,” he said.