Bharti Airtel's performance in the December quarter has been excellent. The telco has added several million active users. Talking specifically about December 2022, the second-largest telecom company in the country added six million active users. The subscriber data has been published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). As per the report, during December 2022, only Jio and Airtel's subscriber base grew overall. Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited's (BSNL) subscriber base declined.
On an overall basis, Bharti Airtel added 1.52 million wireless subscribers, while Jio added 1.70 million subscribers. Note that these are not the active subscribers we are talking about. This is subscriber addition for the overall subscriber base of the telcos. At the same time, BSNL lost 0.87 million wireless users, while Vi lost 2.47 million wireless users.
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Let's talk more about the active user base of the telcos. Active users are more important for the business of the telecom operators as these are subscribers that are actually contributing to the revenues by purchasing services.
December 2022: Active Users for Airtel, Jio, BSNL and Vi
Bharti Airtel's active subscriber base went up from 359 million in November 2022 to 364.98 million in December 2022. This means an addition of approximately 6 million active wireless users. Reliance Jio's active users, or VLR users, went from 388 million in Nov 2022 to 390.7 million in December 2022.
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Airtel's 99.29% of the subscriber base is active, while Jio's 92.10% of the overall subscriber is active. Given the size of the Indian telecom market, there's not a very big difference between the active subscriber base of Jio and Airtel.
On an MoM basis, Vodafone Idea's active subscriber base came down by 0.12 million users, while BSNL lost 0.22 million active users. Active user addition is very important for the telcos as it helps with boosting the average revenue per user (ARPU) figure.
A few days back, TelecomTalk reported that Vodafone Idea lost over 20 million active users in 2022. Both Airtel and Jio are growing at the cost of Vodafone Idea majorly. Vi has not been able to add new subscribers for a long time now. The telco has been trying to retain active users, but it is unable to do that as well.
