Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the two operators who have deployed 5G in almost every region of the country. While Jio is ahead in coverage, Airtel is still present in many locations to be considered a PAN-India 5G operator. For many quarters now, both Airtel and Jio have been sharing the number of 5G subscribers they have. This is a great indicator of whether the 5G susbcriber market is growing in India or not. Let's take a look at who has how many 5G subscribers in India.
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Jio vs Airtel: Who has More 5G Subscribers
At the end of Q4 FY25, Jio reported that it had around 191 million 5G subscribers. Compared to this, Airtel had 135 million users. Jio's 5G user base is 56 million higher than Airtel's. Note that these are not subscribers that are latched on to 5G networks all the time. Here, what the telcos are essentially saying is that these are the number of susbcribers who have latched to our 5G network at least once.
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The availability of 5G handsets in the affordable segment is fueling the growth of 5G subscriber base in the country. There are still plenty of users who are holding a 4G handset. As they upgrade to 5G phones, they will also be potential customers for Airtel and Jio for their 5G services. Note that neither of the operators is charging anything extra from the consumer to offer 5G.
At the same time, Jio is offering unlimited 5G without any data caps while Airtel is offering 300GB to the customer every month with its 5G service. Both telcos are offering 5G with plans that come with 2GB of daily data or more.
