Reliance Jio added several million new active users during the month of April 2025. At the same time, Bharti Airtel lost millions of those. While the overall subscriber base is what many people focus on, it is the active user base or the VLR subscribers that matter more. These are the uesrs who are paying money for services. Let's take a look at the figures to understand what happened in a better way. Note that the data has been provided by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
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How Many Active Subscribers Airtel, Jio, Vi and BSNL Had
Jio's active user base went up from 451 million to 456.55 million, indicating a rise of 5.55 million new active users. Airtel active user base, during the same time went down from 389.68 million to 385.58 million, indicating a decline of 4.1 million active users.
Vodafone Idea (Vi) and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) also lost users.Vi lost 1.14 million active users, while BSNL lost 1.75 million active users. Reliance Jio was the only telecom operator during the month to add new users. This helps Jio in boosting its top line revenues, even though its ARPU (average revenue per user) is lower than Airtel's.
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Bharti Airtel not only lost active users in April 2025, but the telco also saw a decline of ARPU in Q4 FY25. Well, a reduction in non-paying users could lead to a better VLR subscriber percentage, but that doesn't mean as much if there's no impact on the revenues. Reliance Jio was not only ahead in adding active users, but also in adding new 5G FWA (AirFiber) users in the country. As for BSNL and Vi, there's no surprise for anyone that the telcos lost users.
