Airtel tops June subscriber additions, Jio trails: Trai

Vodafone Idea also continued to add subscribers, with net additions accelerating to 163,757 in June from 121,289 in May. However, most of the growth continued to come from the machine-to-machine (M2M) or enterprise connections segment, a business that generates significantly lower average revenue per user (Arpu).

Excluding M2M connections, Airtel added 1.05 million users in June, trailing Jio’s 1.48 million additions. Vodafone Idea, meanwhile, lost 0.46 million users, indicating a moderation in subscriber churn from a loss of 0.83 million in May.

Overall, India’s telecom subscriber base rose to 1.348 billion in June from 1.343 billion in May, although net additions slowed to 4.96 million users from 6.95 million a month earlier, according to TRAI. Both urban and rural markets registered net subscriber additions during the month.

The total wireless subscriber base, including mobile and fixed wireless access (FWA), increased to 1.3 billion from 1.294 billion in May, reflecting a monthly growth rate of 0.45%.

The wireline subscriber base, however, declined by 0.81 million users to 47.82 million, registering a monthly contraction of 1.67%.

Analysts noted that net home broadband subscriber additions slowed to 0.7 million in June, the lowest monthly increase in two years. The home broadband subscriber base stood at 65.6 million at the end of June, up from 65.37 million in May, driven by Jio adding 0.4 million users and Airtel contributing 0.2 million.

“Of the 0.4 million subscribers added by Jio, 0.15 million were FWA, 0.2 million were UBR (FWA) and 0.1 million were fibre. For Airtel, 0.14 million were wired additions and FWA were just 0.06 million. Overall subscriber additions in the segment have slowed over the past three to four months, with June witnessing a sharp decline. It remains to be seen whether this is seasonal,” analysts at DAM Capital said.

At the end of June, Jio’s total subscriber base stood at 503.58 million, up from 501.44 million in May. Airtel’s subscriber base rose to 486.8 million from 483.81 million. Vodafone Idea’s subscriber base increased marginally to 198.82 million from 198.66 million, while BSNL’s subscriber base edged up to 93 million from 92.91 million.

Jio also outpaced Airtel in 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) customer additions during the month, adding 0.15 million net new users compared with Airtel’s 56,773. Both operators recorded higher FWA additions on a month-on-month basis.

As a result, Jio’s 5G FWA subscriber base rose to 9.11 million at the end of June from 8.97 million in May, while Airtel’s increased to 3.82 million from 3.76 million. The country’s total FWA subscriber base stood at 12.94 million, up from 12.73 million a month earlier.

Jio, which has also launched UBR FWA services, added 201,302 subscribers during the month, taking its UBR FWA user base to 4.93 million at the end of June from 4.73 million in May.

Jio’s wireless subscriber market share remained flat sequentially at 39.27%, while Airtel’s share increased to 37.96% from 37.89% in May. Despite reporting net subscriber additions, Vodafone Idea’s market share continued to decline to 15.5% from 15.56%, while BSNL’s share slipped to 7.25% from 7.28%.

According to TRAI data, active subscribers accounted for 93.66% of the total wireless subscriber base in June, marginally higher than 93.64% in May. The active subscriber base rose to 1.201 billion from 1.196 billion in the previous month.

Among operators, Airtel continued to have the highest active subscriber ratio at 99.27%, followed by Jio at 99.07% and Vodafone Idea at 83.98%. Jio was the only operator to register an improvement in the proportion of active subscribers.

During the month, 14.78 million subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), up from 14.46 million applications in May, indicating a sequential rise in porting activity.