In 2015 Airtel shelved Airtel Zero after a public revolt. In 2020 the regulator told Airtel to withhold a postpaid plan called Platinum, told Vodafone Idea to withhold one called RedX, and both products quietly died during the review. On 19 May 2026 Airtel launched Priority Postpaid, which sells something close to what Platinum sold. This time it has not backed down.
Shashwat Sharma had been managing director and chief executive of Airtel India for four and a half months. He took the job on 1 January, succeeding Gopal Vittal, who ran Airtel for thirteen years and now sits above him as executive vice chairman. Priority Postpaid is the first product of consequence Sharma has put his name to, and he chose the argument his company has lost twice.
The argument Airtel did not have in 2020
Priority Postpaid runs on 5G standalone network slicing, which carves one physical network into virtual lanes, each with its own guaranteed share of capacity. Plans run from ₹449 to ₹1,749 a month before GST, and existing postpaid customers were upgraded automatically. “Priority Postpaid is our latest innovation powered by the 5G slicing technology,” Sharma said at the launch. “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.”
On 25 May Airtel wrote to the Department of Telecommunications arguing that the service involves no blocking, no throttling and no preference for any app or website. The defence rests entirely on that, and it is a good one, because India’s 2017 net neutrality rules were written to stop operators favouring particular content. Slicing does not touch content. It prioritises a class of subscriber before content enters the picture, which is a gap the rules were never drafted to cover.
The people most likely to object agree. “Whatever is being offered right now is not a net neutrality violation. It is only prioritisation with respect of speech allocation to certain subscribers,” Apar Gupta, founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, told Inc42. Nikhil Pahwa, who founded MediaNama and helped lead the 2015 campaign that killed Airtel Zero, took the same view, with a condition: the service must not degrade the experience of everyone else.
The four per cent defence
Airtel told the DoT panel that postpaid accounts for about 4% of its mobile traffic and would reach roughly 6% after the rollout, too small a share to degrade the network for anyone else. The argument is reasonable, and it sits awkwardly beside the company’s own results.
In the June quarter, the first full quarter Priority Postpaid was live, Airtel reported its highest ever quarterly postpaid additions, one million, taking the postpaid base to 30 million. Consolidated net profit rose 37% to ₹8,167 crore. Average revenue per user reached ₹264. The company is telling the regulator that the slice is too small to matter while telling the market it has never sold postpaid faster.
The number that frames both is that over 95% of India’s mobile subscribers are prepaid. Whatever Priority Postpaid is worth, it is being sold to the smaller half of a very lopsided market, and the case for it resting on that smallness is the same case that would collapse if it succeeded.
What the rivals actually said
Reliance Jio backed the technology. In a submission dated 25 May to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, it described slicing as a standardised feature of 5G standalone networks, consistent with net neutrality as long as ordinary internet access is not degraded. It then added the sentence that was not about technology at all: new slicing products should launch only after consultation with the department, not before.
Vodafone Idea asked the same committee to have priority plans paused until the DoT and TRAI issue clearer guidance, and ran a campaign against Airtel with the line “No more, no less but equal network to all”. Parag Kar, a telecom analyst, has argued that prepaid users could face congestion if priority customers consume a large share of capacity, and that TRAI’s own rules require specialised services not to hurt ordinary internet access.
The committee, chaired by the BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, summoned DoT and TRAI officials within days of the launch and gave both 25 days to respond in writing. TRAI’s preliminary reading, as of June, was that the plan shows no immediate violation. It has also asked Airtel for further technical and quality of service data, and set no deadline for concluding.
Sharma has engineered that position, whether or not he intended it. Neither the regulator nor the committee has published a study of whether prepaid users have received measurably worse service since 19 May, so the dispute remains one of principle rather than measurement. Every month it stays there is a month in which 30 million postpaid customers get used to paying for a lane. Airtel Zero and Platinum both died before they got that far.
Sources
- Bharti Airtel, launch announcement for Priority Postpaid, May 2026
- Total Telecom, carrying the launch release with the Sharma quote and the full plan table, 21 May 2026
- Communications Today, on the Jio and Vodafone Idea submissions, the parliamentary committee, TRAI’s review and the 2020 Platinum and RedX precedent, 31 July 2026
- Inc42, on the 4% traffic defence, the 95% prepaid base, and the Apar Gupta, Nikhil Pahwa and Parag Kar positions, 29 May 2026
- The Hindu BusinessLine, on Q1 profit, ARPU and the record postpaid additions, 8 August 2026
- Bharti Airtel, key managerial personnel, confirming Shashwat Sharma as managing director and chief executive, Airtel India
- Forbes India, on the succession taking effect 1 January 2026, 19 December 2025
