Bharti Airtel must be very happy right now. The telco’s performance has improved quite well in June 2021 as compared to May 2021. Make no mistake; no one would have written off the second-largest telecom operator from their books just because it had one bad month. But, the sigh of relief for the telco must have come because of the percentage of active users it has. While it has always been known that Bharti Airtel has more active users than Reliance Jio in terms of percentage, in June 2021, the telco even had more active users than Jio in terms of total numbers.
Bharti Airtel High ARPU to Benefit the Company a Lot
As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report, Bharti Airtel had 344 million active users in the month of June 2021. In comparison to this, Reliance Jio had 340 million active users. It is worth noting that both the telcos had added an equal number (2.4 million) of new active subscribers in June 2021.
Bharti Airtel had lost most than 4.5 million users in May 2021. This might have primarily been because of the nationwide lockdowns because of the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the very same month, Reliance Jio had added 3.5 million users.
This had a big impact on the way people saw Bharti Airtel in the short term. I believe Reliance Jio had added new customers on the back of low tariffs and the new JioPhone offer announced in March 2021. But the effect of the JioPhone 2021 offer will subside as months go by.
With more active users than Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel will be earning from more people even though its overall subscriber base is smaller than Jio’s. Further, Airtel’s average revenue per user (ARPU) is also much more than Jio’s, which will help the telco in earning big profits.
As of June 2021, Bharti Airtel had a total of 352.11 million users, out of which 343.71 million users were active, imputing 97.62% of the telco’s subscribers were active. In comparison, Reliance Jio and Vi’s networks had 77.94% and 88.43% active subscribers.
Regardless, Reliance Jio is not too behind Bharti Airtel. But Airtel enjoys the benefit of high tariffs, and thus its blended ARPU is much more than that of Reliance Jio’s. Further, Jio’s ARPU should not go very high, given that most of its new users might be the ones going for the JioPhone 2021 offer. Overall, Bharti Airtel must have released a sigh of relief looking at the performance for the month of June 2021.
