• Listen to the Q4FY26 earnings call here.

Bharti Airtel executives used the company’s Q4 FY26 earnings call to argue that India’s telecom pricing structure is “broken” due to unlimited plans and called for a differential pricing architecture, while acknowledging the company cannot do so alone in a competitive market.

Airtel pushes differential pricing and criticises unlimited data: Executive Vice-Chairman Gopal Vittal said India’s current telecom pricing structure prevents operators from charging higher rates for heavy users. “The price architecture in this country is broken,” Vittal said, adding that at “Rs 340-350, you’re capped out because you’re running unlimited data plans”, while responding to a question about accelerating Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPU) growth.

He contrasted India’s pricing with the US and Europe, where unlimited plans cost substantially more. Vittal said Airtel wants a more tiered pricing structure “moving from small, medium, large and extra-large”, with differentiated allowances that create “a natural pathway to upgradation”.

He then added, “It’s an unfortunate situation where the rich are paying less than they ought to, and the poor are perhaps paying as much as they need to.” Bharti Hexacom managing director Soumen Ray separately said the industry now has “a pack which destroys the whole price ladder”.

Meanwhile, Airtel managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) Shashwat Sharma said Airtel wants to accelerate ARPU growth through postpaid upgrades, higher consumption tiers and premium plans. Vittal, however, said Airtel cannot move alone because “it’s a competitive market”. 

AI now ‘central’ to Airtel’s strategy: Sharma said, “AI is now central to our digital agenda.” During the quarter, Airtel’s AI systems detected 14 billion spam calls and more than 520 million spam messages. Sharma said Airtel’s “next best action” AI models generated 135 million actions to cross-sell Wi-Fi, postpaid and financial services.

He also disclosed that Airtel processed 375 million customer interactions through voice AI bots and analysed 256 million images through “Vision AI” systems for safety, design and workmanship checks. One of the largest disclosures came when Sharma said, “AI is contributing to nearly 30% of all code written at Airtel.”

Vittal additionally revealed that Airtel bought “a few hundred GPUs” for internal AI workloads. He said newer chips are now ”10x” more efficient than GPUs from roughly two-and-a-half years ago.

Airtel pitches sovereign cloud and edge infrastructure: Airtel executives also outlined plans for “Airtel Cloud”, saying it secured 24 cloud deals during FY26 and added more customers in April.

Vittal said, “A lot of workloads do need a sovereign requirement,” adding, “We are fully sovereign. We are controlled by an Indian entity. So the control plane, the data plane, the jurisdiction, all of it is in India.”

Airtel also said it wants to build 1 gigawatt of data centre capacity over the next few years, while Nxtra recently announced a $1 billion fundraise. Separately, Vittal said Airtel plans to build 56 edge data centres over the next 18-24 months.

Airtel doubles down on Africa: Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal described Africa as being where India was “10-20 years ago”, citing low smartphone penetration, low data consumption and a young population. The company recently approved a share swap transaction to raise its stake in Airtel Africa to roughly 78%.

Also read

• Airtel Q4FY26: Mobile data usage hits 31.4 GB per user per month, ARPU rises to Rs 257
• Bharti Airtel to Invest Rs 20,000 Crore in Airtel Money After Getting NBFC License
• From Data to AI Tokens: Jio’s Next Telecom Disruption May Be Cheaper AI