Vodafone Idea (Vi) has lost to Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel in yet another area of competition. Until now, Vi was the second-ranked telecom operator when it came to the VLR subscribers percentage or the percentage of active subscribers it had against its total user pool. However, with a swift and heavy blow to its subscriber base, Reliance Jio has removed a ton of inactive users and has gone ahead of Vi in the VLR subscribers percentage. Jio, which used to be in the third rank in VLR subscribers percentage is now at the second with 87.64% of its users active. Vodafone Idea has gone down to the third position with 86.42% of its subscribers active.
Bharti Airtel Remains the King of VLR Subscribers Percentage
For a long time now, Bharti Airtel has remained the king of VLR subscribers percentage and even in the month of December 2021, Airtel’s 98.01% subscribers were active, suggests data shared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
While in terms of percentage Jio is behind Airtel in VLR subscribers, in overall numbers, Jio has more active users than Airtel. In the month of December 2021, Jio had 364.34 active users while Bharti Airtel had 348.69 million active subscribers.
Not a major difference in active users, but a thing worth noting here is that Jio has all 4G network users while Airtel’s customer base also includes legacy network users.
BSNL had the worst VLR subscriber percentage of 50.32% with only 57.55 million users active during the month.
Vodafone Idea needs to reduce subscriber churn and add new users fast. But for that, the telco needs money to upgrade the networks. Vi has appointed SBI Capital Markets to restructure and raise fresh loans from the financial institutions. The telco is in need of capital against private equity but it has been unable to raise it so far. The promoters need to step in here and show that they have faith in the functioning of the telco.
