As per the telecom subscription report released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for the month of November 2024, every telco lost active wireless users. While Jio was the only one which added wireless users to its overall base, even Jio lost active users. The decline in active user base can be attributed to several factors - people shutting down SIM cards or the telos deactivating older SIMs which have been inactive for a while. Let's take a look at the figures to understand how many active wireless users telcos lost.
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Active Wireless User Base of Telcos in November 2024
The active user base of Bharti Airtel came down from 383.40 million users in October 2024 to 380.37 million in November 2024. For Jio, this figure came down from 448.33 million to 447.20 million. Vodafone Idea's active user base declined from 178.80 million users to 176.90 million users. BSNL saw a marginal decline from 55.72 million to 55.67 million.
So here's how many active users each of these telecom operators lost:
- Airtel - 3.03 million
- Jio - 1.13 million
- Vi - 1.90 million
- BSNL - 0.05 million
This is the total active user base of the private telcos at the end November 2024 as per TRAI:
- Airtel - 380.37 million
- Reliance Jio - 447.20 million
- Vi - 176.90 million
- BSNL - 55.67 million
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Reliance Jio leads in the category of active users by a huge margin. Airtel stands in the second rank followed by Vi. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have most of the active users in the market. Vi and BSNL combined don't match either Airtel or Jio's total active user base. Vodafone Idea has been trying to add 4G users, and with the recent funding, the telco will be able to improve its networks. Further, the government support will also enable Vi in raising more funds via debt to scale networks and compete head on with Airtel and Jio.