There is no minimum contract period – but will the freemium model work and how long will AI offered by operators differentiate them?
Telefónica has entered into an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT Plus available to Movistar customers from today. Movistar is Telefónica’s mobile consumer brand in Spain. Customers will have access for six months to the AI tool, at no additional cost and with no minimum contract period. ChatGPT Plus supports continuous conversation, content creation and can help with everyday tasks.
Telefónica says this is advancing its goal of democratising the use of AI tools for the residential market in Spain: in January 2025, Movistar was the first national brand to offer AI services in the shape of a 12 months free subscription to Perplexity Pro.
The freemium model
By giving away access to premium AI tools, operators are hoping customers will become dependent on them and appreciate their superiority to the the free versions. The plan is that customers see the AI tools as a good reason for staying with an operator and are willing to pay for them once the free period ends.
In addition, customers are also generating vast amounts of data when using the AI tools which is super useful to operators and the AI tool providers alike in helping to understand customers’ wants and needs to shape future products and services.
All-you-can-eat is a danger
There are potential problems with this approach, such as what happens when all operators start offering access to AI tools, possibly losing their unique selling point in markets? Telefónica and others are offering access to more than one AI engine, so could users probably could easily switch from one operator to another and continue using Perplexity Pro, say, free of charge?
And what happens when operators break step with the market and offer access to AI premium tools free of charge permanently? Presumably the others will be forced to follow – arguably this is why tiered pricing has never worked well in telecoms because there is always the danger that someone puts an ‘all you can eat’ offer on the table. After that, it’s all about price rather than differentiation and quality.
It would be interesting to know how many of Movistar customers hop straight onto the new, free ChatGPT Plus offer as the free subscription period for Perplexity Pro comes to an end. Movistar’s view is it is adding ChatGPT Plus to its ecosystem of AI solutions, making complementary and widely used tools available to its customers globally.
