Airtel Thanks Doesn’t Seem Very Thankful Right Now
In the highly competitive Indian telecom market, Airtel’s plans to appeal to premium customers with additional benefits as part of their Airtel Thanks plans on mobile and fixed-line broadband are coming undone.
Why So Many Offers?
To hold their market share and keep their subscribers with them, telcos partnered with a lot of companies to advertise their offerings. They also came up with a lot of new offers to entice new customers, and keep the old ones. While this lucrative packaging worked on some customers, some realised that even with all these frills, their effective benefits didn’t quite add up. They justified their higher costs by saying they are offering access to quality content. When we did an overall comparison of the plan prices and the offerings they come with, these claims hilariously fell flat.
Airtel admittedly wants to focus on high revenue-generating customers. According to Airtel CEO, Gopal Vittal, “We are putting a bunch of hooks into the Airtel Thanks (platform) to drive customer upgrades”. Their goal was to focus on the middle and high range plan subscribers to increase their ARPU. Airtel Thanks was aimed to convert these lower-tariff subscribers into middle/higher-tariff subscribers, so they could contribute to increasing the ARPU, and maybe get these telcos to care about them too!
Following the big bang launch, Airtel Thanks wanted to compete with a premium offering. It successfully prevented some customers from leaving the network on the back of these freebies.
Airtel Thanks!
Airtel tried to compete by offering subscriptions from leading OTT platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Airtel offered Netflix membership for up to 3 months with their Airtel Thanks bundle to postpaid customers who were on a plan of ₹499 or above, and broadband customers who are on a plan of ₹1,099 or above.
Airtel Thanks offer also provided access to Amazon Prime. Postpaid subscribers with plans of ₹499 or above, got access to Amazon Prime for 1 year, while prepaid Airtel mobile users had to recharge a ₹299 pack with 28-day validity. Broadband users got access to Amazon Prime for 1 year on plans of ₹1,099 or above.
Besides Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, Airtel also offered access to ZEE5, HOOQ, Eros Now, ALT Balaji, etc. on Airtel Xstream (formerly, Airtel TV Premium).
But, No Thanks!
For those who don’t know, Airtel’s strategic partnership with Netflix has ended, turning into a rather short affair. If you are among those who don’t have this information, don’t judge yourself too harshly. So far, the telco has been publically silent about it, in sharp contrast to their hullabaloo around the announcement of the partnership. Airtel will no longer offer free Netflix subscriptions with their Xstream Fiber broadband plans and postpaid plans. However, they are still offering Zee5 Premium, Amazon Prime, and their own Xstream services with their broadband and postpaid plans.
Netflix might have opted out of this partnership. This could be because their alliance with Airtel wasn’t adding any significant value to their viewer base or their bottomline. Now, Netflix itself has a cheap mobile-only plan, and they are also offering discounts on three, six, and twelve-month plans. This makes them seem like a good investment to more and more consumers every day, reducing their dependency on any telco for widening their subscriber base.
Rumours going around, like Netflix is only the first OTT platform to drop out from the offer. The rest of the OTT platforms will follow the same trend and take the same path, eventually. The end of this partnership is also the end of the ‘value proposition’ that Airtel claimed earlier. Their prices are still the same, in light of this development that affects the overall value of the plan. Currently, we are paying the same amount we used to, while not getting all the benefits we were once offered.
Airtel is allegedly using the classic ‘bait and switch’ technique where they lure the audience in with their lucrative offers and promises, but offer subpar services and add ons when they have gained the consumers’ trust and taken their money. They seem to be operating under the presumption that switching to any other mobile carrier would seem hard to the consumer.
We are not saying that Airtel shouldn’t have ever ended that offer, but they surely could have been open and upfront about the reality. What do you think about this? Share your thoughts with us in the comments! Till then, happy DeCoding!
