The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) released the Telecom Subscription Data report for September 2020. For the second straight month, Bharti Airtel has outperformed Reliance Jio by adding 3.77 million new users compared to 1.46 million new users added by the latter. The report also highlighted that Airtel ended the month with 326.61 million subscribers under its belt, whereas Jio tops the chart with 404.13 million users. Vodafone Idea continues to lose the subscribers and as per the latest report, the telco had lost 4.65 million existing users. Analysts are predicting that Airtel is securing Vi's lost customers which could be the reason behind the former' sudden rise in subscriber additions.
Airtel and Jio Have Almost Equal Active Subscribers: Trai
At the end of September 2020, Reliance Jio ended the month with a market share of 35.19%, followed by Bharti Airtel with 28.44% and Vodafone Idea with 27.73%. BSNL is fourth on the list with 10.36% market share and MTNL with 0.29%. Despite Jio having 404.13 million subscribers under its belt, the active userbase of the telco is on par with that of Airtel. Out of Airtel's 326.61 million users, a staggering 96.90% (316.49 million) users are VLR (active wireless subscribers). Second on the list is Vodafone Idea whose 261.23 million subscribers out of 295.50 million are active.
Reliance Jio is third on this list with 318.28 million active users out of 404.13 million customers. BSNL has just 51.92% users active on its network out of the total reported subscriber base of 118.99 million. The reason behind both Airtel and Vodafone Idea having more active users than Reliance Jio is the minimum recharge policy. Both the telcos are forcing customers to make monthly minimum recharges to keep their mobile number active. Reliance Jio does not have any such policy at the moment and the telco is providing unlimited incoming calling facility, unlike Airtel and Vi.
Trai also added that a total of 8.71 million requests were received for Mobile Number Portability (MNP). The large portion of these requests might be from Vodafone Idea customers who are said to be ported out to Airtel and Reliance Jio.
