In order to lure more customers in its network, Bharti Airtel (Airtel) on Monday has launched ‘family plans’ that will help subscribers to port to Airtel with freebies like free over-the-top (OTT) subscriptions for six-months or a year, and also its existing prepaid customers can convert their plans to postpaid to get these offers and pay only one bill.

The family plan starts at ₹599 that offers two mobile connections, unlimited calls, 100SMS/day, 105GB data, Amazon Prime for six months, Disney+Hotstar for a year and Airtel Xstream pack. The plan goes up to ₹1,499 that offers five mobile connections, unlimited calls, 100 SMS per day and 320GB of internet and free access to Amazon Prime for six months, Disney+Hotstar for a year, Netflix standard and Xtream mobile pack.

Black family plans

To counter Reliance Jio’s (RJio) new plans, Airtel also launched two new ‘black family’ plans at ₹799 and ₹998. In the ₹799 plan, it is giving two postpaid connections and a DTH connection with 105GB of internet and 350+ SD channels, Airtel Xstream, one year of Disney+Hotstar and six months of Amazon Prime and Netflix basic plan.

Similarly, the ₹998 plan offers 105GB of internet, broadband connection with 40Mbps unlimited data, Airtel Xstream, one year of Disney+Hotstar and six months of Amazon Prime.

“Airtel was the pioneer to launch ‘family’ as a proposition way back in 2015...it is unique for multiple connections at home. It brings out the benefit of sharing between the family like data roll-over or convenience of single bill and a host of other benefits like OTT. This has been popular among our retail customers and many of them are now on family plans,” a source from the company told businessline.

Serving nuclear families

Getting a consistent feedback from its customers for Airtel’s products and services, the company decided to launch such affordable plans for nuclear families, the person requesting anonymity said.

“Now, there are young nuclear families who are away from their hometowns and they need a solution for their small family. Family plan was earlier starting at ₹999 with four connections, but a lot of them asked if they can have two connections and get all the offers and advantages of a ‘family plan’,” the source explained.

Recently, RJio had launched new family plans starting at ₹399 per month with additional three add-on connections at ₹99 per SIM. This was converting into a total monthly charge of ₹696 for a family of four including a monthly charge of Rs.174 per SIM.