Beating Jio, Airtel gained 3.77mn new subscribers in September: Details
After a huge gap of four years, India's second-largest telecom service provider, Bharti Airtel, has outperformed Reliance Jio Infocomm in terms of monthly mobile subscriber additions. In the month of September this year, Sunit Mittal-owned Airtel emerged the biggest gainer of new users, adding 3.77 million subscribers, beating the country's biggest telecom player, Reliance Jio, by over two times. Here are more details.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), while Airtel gained 3.77 million new subscribers in September, Reliance Jio was a distant second as it managed to add only 1.46 million new subscribers in the same period. It is interesting to note that, this is for the second straight month that Airtel's subscriber base has grown faster than Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio.
Notably, since the launch of its commercial operations in September 2016, Reliance Jio had consecutively maintained the top position in terms of monthly mobile subscriber additions until September 2020. On the other hand, TRAI's latest data also shows that Vodafone Idea emerged as the biggest loser as it continued to lose its subscribers. Its user base declined by a whopping 4.65 million in September.
Meanwhile, according to TRAI, public sector telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) witnessed a rise in monthly subscriber additions as it gained 78,454 new users in September. However, another public sector telco, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), lost 5,784 customers in the same period.
Despite losing out to Airtel in September, Reliance Jio still continues to lead the country's overall mobile subscriber base with 404.12 million users (35.19% market share). It is followed by Airtel with 326.61 million subscribers (28.44% market share), Vodafone Idea with 295.49 million users (25.73% market share), BSNL with 118.89 million customers (10.35% market share), and MTNL with 3.33 million subscribers (0.29% market share).
According to the TRAI data, the country's overall wireless or mobile telephony subscriber base rose to 1,148.58 million in September from 1,147.92 million in August this year. Meanwhile, the mobile number portability requests climbed to 520.8 million in September from 512.1 million in August 2020.
