Airtel Xstream Premium ‘streaming super app’ with 15 OTT services announced

Airtel Xstream Premium offers 15 different OTT media services and will cost Airtel customers Rs 149 a month or Rs 1,499 annually.

Airtel has announced the relaunch of its Xstream streaming service as the Airtel Xstream Premium, a “streaming super app” with over 15 different OTT media services bundled into one app available across platforms. It will be offered to Airtel customers at an introductory price of Rs. 149 a month, or Rs. 1,499 annually.

Airtel Xstream Premium promises content from over 15 different OTP platforms with one login, one experience and and an introductory price of Rs.149 per month (FILE PHOTO)

Airtel has announced its Xstream Premium, which will now be a “streaming super app” and give users access to over 15 different over the top (OTT) streaming services as well. Airtel customers will be able to access content from these services from one app thanks to the service. It will be offered to Airtel customers at an introductory price of Rs 149 a month, or Rs 1,499 annually.

The new service will feature over 10,500 movies, shows and live channels from SonyLIV, ErosNow, Lionsgate Play, Hoichoi, ManoramaMax, Shemaroo, Ultra, HungamaPlay, EPICon, Docubay, DivoTV, Klikk, Nammaflix, Dollywood, and Shorts TV.

“The current OTT ecosystem offers a fragmented experience. Payments is also a difficult problem when one user has multiple subscriptions. The proposition pricing of subscribing to multiple services adds up very fast and becomes quite expensive,” Adarsh Nair, chief product officer (CPO) Airtel India told indianexpress.com in an interaction.

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“One price. One Login. One login. Content from more than 10 platforms on one single app backed by our technology. Our OTT partners do what they do best: curate and create the best content. And we do what we do best: distribution and technology,” he added.

The service will be available across platforms to Airtel customers at the new introductory price

Airtel customers can access the bundled service at introductory prices.

The streaming service will offer a unified experience across its mobile app, desktop app, desktop browser experience, Airtel’s Xstream set-top-box, and smart TV application.

Nair believes that there is another significant benefit for its OTT partners with the Airtel partnership. They can get access to detailed viewership insights and data, which can help them decide future content curation and creation efforts. For example, a platform could look at a city like Delhi and based on the analysis, they could understand which genre works best with the audience in the city.

But this also opens up questions about user data privacy. Airtel believes it solves this problem by having a user consent-based framework where data is shared with partners with explicit user consent. Also, a bulk of the data that Airtel’s OTT partners can access will be aggregated data and insights.

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While users can purchase Xstream Premium with all the OTT services together, Adarsh Nair also hinted at the possibilities of the service being repackaged or bundled with other Airtel products depending on the product, service and region.

“For example, it could be that a customer activating a prepaid mobile pack in West Bengal would also unlock Hoichoi, which is the most popular streaming service in the state. Or a customer in Kerala could unlock Manorama Max. A similar bundling could also happen with our other products, including home internet and DTH,” he said.