Airtel enhances Rs 999 postpaid plans with Apple’s expanded iCloud+ bundle

Bharti Airtel has expanded its family postpaid offering by bundling Apple’s iCloud+, Apple TV and Apple Arcade with its Rs 999 and higher family postpaid plans, as the telecom operator looks to add more digital services to its premium offerings.

The new proposition gives Airtel family-postpaid customers access to iCloud+ for cloud storage and syncing, Apple TV for Apple’s original series and movies, and Apple Arcade, which offers a catalogue of games without ads or in-app purchases.

The offering is available to customers on family postpaid plans priced at Rs 999 and above. Airtel said customers can upgrade through the Airtel app or at its stores.


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With iCloud+, customers can store, sync and access photos, files, passwords, contacts and other information across Apple devices, while also backing up data to make it easier to set up new devices.

The Rs 999 family postpaid plan offers three connections with unlimited data, Fastlane technology, spam protection and entertainment subscriptions. Airtel said the addition of Apple's services is aimed at combining connectivity, entertainment, gaming and cloud storage under a single plan.

Amit Tripathi, Director Market Ops- Bharti Airtel, said, “At Airtel, we are constantly looking at ways to make our customers’ lives simpler while creating more differentiated value through our propositions. Our family postpaid plans are designed around this belief, bringing together connectivity, entertainment and digital experiences that matter to the entire family, all through a single plan. With the addition of Apple’s iCloud+, Apple TV and Apple Arcade to our family postpaid plan offerings, we are taking this proposition a step further, giving customers even more value and making the Airtel experience more rewarding.”

Focus on premiumisation

The move comes as Airtel continues to focus on extracting greater value from its customer base through plan restructuring and richer bundled offerings.

The telecom operator recently withdrew select prepaid plans priced at Rs 299, Rs 579, Rs 619 and Rs 649. Subscribers of the Rs 299 plan were left with the Rs 349 pack as the next option, implying a price increase of around 16%.

The move was seen as part of Airtel's broader effort to improve average revenue per user (ARPU), rather than a broad-based tariff increase. People aware of the development had said users on the Rs 299 plan often exhausted their data allowance and subsequently bought top-ups or recharged again, while the Rs 349 plan offers unlimited 5G data.

The changes have been viewed as selective plan rationalisation and premiumisation as telecom operators seek higher monetisation without necessarily resorting to headline tariff hikes.

Airtel's consolidated quarterly revenue stood at Rs 58,539 crore, up 18.4% year-on-year and 5.7% sequentially, supported by growth across its India and Africa operations.

Airtel adds digital services to postpaid

The broader strategy has been to encourage higher-value usage and premiumisation through differentiated plans and services. Airtel had also introduced Priority Postpaid in May, using 5G slicing technology to offer a differentiated network experience to postpaid customers, with its Rs 999 family-of-three plan carrying Apple TV+ and Apple Music among its bundled benefits.

The latest Apple bundle further broadens that strategy by adding cloud storage and gaming to the mix, giving Airtel another lever to make higher-value postpaid plans more attractive to families.