Mukesh Ambani-led Jio gained 5.46 million wireless subscribers against Airtel’s 3.81 million, latest subscriber data collated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) released Monday showed.
Struggling Vi’s customer base continued to fall, losing 4.28 million customers in June, indicating that it’s unable to compete effectively with either Jio or Airtel who operate stronger 4G networks.
Latest Trai mobile user data showed Jio’s June user base swelled to 436.7 million while Airtel’s rose to 352.11 million. Vi’s user base, by contrast, fell to 273.33 million.
Jio, Airtel and Vi, though, reported user bases of 441 million, 321.23 million and 255.4 million in their respective June quarter earnings numbers.
“The variation in customer numbers vis-à-vis Trai data is since Jio’s user base in its quarterly earnings numbers included its 3 million-odd home broadband users, while Airtel and Vi include only their active, revenue-generating mobile users in their quarterly earnings numbers,” said an analyst, who did not wish to be named.
Visitor Location Register (VLR), a key metric reflecting the number of active subscribers on a mobile network, showed that 97.62% of the users were active for Bharti Airtel, 88.43% for Vi and 77.94% for Jio.
Analysts expect Jio’s subscriber adds to stay robust, driven by a combination of recent capacity additions via spectrum purchases, new JioPhone offers and the upcoming launch of its mass-market, budget 4G smartphone, JioPhone Next, developed with Google.
Trai data shows Jio and Airtel have widened customer market shares to 36.98% (36.64%) and and 29.82% (29.6%) respectively, while Vi’s has narrowed further to 23.15% (23.59%) over the previous month respectively.
Data collated by the sector regulator showed India’s mobile user base rose by nearly 4 million to 1.180 billion in June 2021.
