Airtel’s priority push may revive net neutrality debate

Bharti Airtel‘s launch of Priority Postpaid on Tuesday, a service promising a superior and more consistent network experience through 5G network slicing technology, may have reopened a debate that the telecom sector believed had largely been settled a decade ago.

While the company’s latest offering does not appear to violate existing net neutrality regulations, industry executives and analysts say it could once again bring into focus questions around preferential treatment in Internet access — this time not on the basis of content, but on the basis of customer class.