Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel’s subscriber base expanded in May 2022 with millions of new subscribers. At the same time, Vodafone Idea and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) had to face a dip in subscribers once again. The data has been released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
Jio, Airtel, Vi, and BSNL Subscriber Addition/Loss for May 2022
As per the data shared by TRAI, Jio added a total of 3,111,417 or 3.11 million new users, while Airtel added 1,027,881 or 1.02 million new users. MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited), both state-run telcos, saw their subscriber base declining by 2,665 (0.0026 million) and 531,502 or 0.53 million users. Vodafone Idea (Vi), the third-largest telco in India, also saw its subscriber base going down by 759,258 (0.75 million) users. It has been a long-time since Vi’s user base grew. The telco has been able to add new 4G subscribers, but its overall subscriber base has been shrinking pretty fast. Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) circle saw the highest growth in wireless subscribers during the month. In Haryana, the biggest drop in wireless subscribers was noticed.
Airtel, Jio, Vi and BSNL Active or VLR Subscribers
In the month of April 2022, Airtel had over 352.68 million active users, which grew to become 354.86 million in May 2022, meaning a growth of 2.18 million active users. The active subscriber percentage for Airtel stands at 97.98% in May 2022 compared to 97.65% in the previous month. Jio’s active user base grew by a whopping 4.46 million users. Jio had 378.85 million active users in April 2022, which grew to 383.31 million users in May 2022. Vodafone Idea’s active user base shrunk from 222.33 million users in April 2022 to 220.04 million users in May 2022 (a decline of 2.29 million users). BSNL had 58.85 million active users in May 2022 compared to 59.31 million users in April 2022, meaning a decline of 0.46 million users. BSNL and Vi need to keep adding subscribers to stay in the competition.
