Airtel is betting its future on a two-tier internet

In today’s Finshots, we talk about Airtel’s new trick up its sleeve to get ahead in the revenue race and why the telecom industry thinks that’s unfair.The StoryWhenever you fly, you’ve probably seen those priority check-in lines sitting right next to the regular bag drop counters.

Or maybe you’ve even been in one of them.If you’re flying IndiGo, it’s called Fast Forward. On Air India, it goes by ZipAhead. The idea is simple. Pay a little extra and you get to zip past the chaos and get access to dedicated check-in counters, shorter queues, quicker security, and even “anytime boarding” in some cases.Until now, this sort of experience mostly existed in Indian airlines.

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But Airtel now wants to bring something similar to India’s telecom sector, specifically, mobile internet.For context, last week, Airtel announced Priority Postpaid, a new service that uses something called 5G slicing technology to offer a more premium and consistent internet experience to postpaid users or the folks who pay a fixed monthly bill, unlike prepaid users who simply recharge as they go.What’s 5G slicing, you ask?Well, it’s a feature supported on standalone 5G architecture that allows telecom operators to carve out separate portions of network capacity for different categories of users or services. The idea is to deliver a more consistent experience in crowded, high-traffic places like concerts, railway stations, busy marketplaces, or packed urban areas where networks often struggle to keep up.To understand it better, think of your mobile network as a single water pipe serving an entire apartment building. When everyone showers at 7 am, the water pressure drops for everyone.Network slicing is like splitting that one pipe into separate channels.