As per data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Bharti Airtel, which announced earlier today that it had tested 5G in India, in a commercial manner had gained more mobile users, or subscribers, in comparison to the market leader, Jio, for the fourth consecutive month in November. This is a sign of users shifting from Vi and migrating to Airtel, which is poor news for VI, which keeps losing out customers day in and day out. Bharti Airtel managed to add 4.3 million new customers, while Jio managed to grab just 1.9 million subscribers in November 2020. On the flip side, we have Vodafone Idea that lost 2.8 million existing users. With this, the overall subscriber base of Bharti Airtel increased to 334.66 million at the end of November 2020. Airtel also has the maximum number of active subscribers in the industry.
What do the Numbers Indicate?
In terms of raw numbers, Bharti Airtel gained a whopping 4.37 million wireless subscribers against Jio’s 1.93 million, while struggling Vi lost 2.89 million users in November, indicated the data released by Trai on Thursday. The data further showed that Airtel’s November user base increased to 334.6 Million, in comparison to Jio, which has a total user base of 408.2 million. VI’s user base, which has been on a decline, stood at 289.9 million, according to the report. To add to the announcements, for those unaware, Jio recently stated a user base of almost 411 million for the quarter that ended on December 31, 2020. Airtel and Vi are yet to report their earnings for Q3 FY21. Customer market share wise, the data showcased that Airtel and Jio increased their customer market share to 28.97% and 35.34%, while Vi’s had decreased to 25.10% over the previous month.
The Trai Telecom Subscription Data report for November 2020 also highlighted that Airtel has the maximum proportion of its active wireless subscribers (VLR) as against its total wireless subscribers (HLR). As noted, Airtel ended November 2020 with a total of 334.66 million subscribers, out of which 323.39 million (96.63%) users are active. Vodafone Idea is second on the VLR list with 89.01% subscribers active on the network out of 289.95 million. Reliance Jio is fourth on the list with just 79.55% (324.78 million) active users out of 408.29 million total subscribers. We expect Bharti Airtel to have more active subscribers than Reliance Jio in the next couple of months. Reliance Jio now has two worries- low subscriber additions and poor active user base (VLR). The Mukesh Ambani-owned telco would be aiming to get back to track at the earliest.
