Even as Reliance Jio added 4.18 million mobile users in January — its highest in 19 months, peer Bharti Airtel got the lead in active subscribers, with nearly 3.6 million additions during the month, according to data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
Airtel’s active user addition was the highest in 13 months, the data showed.
With regard to overall mobile user additions, Jio has been leading the competition for nearly two years now. As of January end, the company’s mobile user base was at 463.9 million. On the other hand, Airtel added 752,853 mobile users, taking its base to 382.5 million at the end of January.
Vodafone Idea on the other hand lost subscribers for the 34th straight month in January. The telecom operator lost 1.5 million users, taking its total base to 221.5 million. BSNL lost 1.18 million users and its subscriber base was at 90.6 million. The state-owned telecom operator lost subscribers for the 25th straight month.
A continuous increase in user base for Jio and Airtel is largely due to churn at Vodafone Idea and BSNL in absence of launch of 5G services by the former and 4G/5G services by BSNL. Jio, with its aggressive network expansion and JioPhone 4G phone, is mostly getting benefited from the churn and 2G to 4G migration, analysts said.
Overall, the subscriber base in the country rose by 2.2 million to 1.16 billion in January. In December, the subscriber base rose by 4.3 million.
Trai data suggests that Jio’s wireless subscribers market share rose to 39.97% in January from 39.7% in the previous month. Airtel’s market share was flat at 32.95%, whereas that of Vodafone Idea fell to 19.09% from 19.25%. BSNL’s market share fell to 7.82% from 7.94% in December.
On the active users front, Airtel’s subscriber base was at 381.1 million. The company has been leading the additions for two months now. Jio’s active user base rose by 1.1 million to 425.6 million in January. Vodafone Idea lost 1.7 million active users, taking its count to 194.9 million. On the other hand, BSNL lost 228,043 subscribers, taking its active user base to 48.3 million.
The overall active subscriber base rose by 2.7 million in January. Of the total 1.16 billion subscribers, 1.05 billion or 90.5% were active, according to the peak visitor location register, which shows the number of active users, including those roaming on a mobile operator’s network.
With regard to 4G, the three telecom operators’ net added 6.06 million 4G subscribers, Trai data showed. As of January end, a total of 850.52 million 4G/5G subscribers were there in the country for the three private telecom operators. Vodafone Idea is yet to launch 5G.
Bharti Airtel added 2.4 million 4G/5G users in January, taking its 4G/5G subscriber base to 259.8 million. Vodafone Idea lost 510,000 4G subscribers, taking its base to 126.77 million.
According to Trai, in January, 12.36 million subscribers submitted their requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP). “With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 927.19 million at the end of December to 939.55 million at the end of January 2024, since implementation of MNP,” Trai said.