Bharti Airtel, the second-largest telecom operator in the country, has retained its lead over Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea (Vi) when it comes to VLR subscribers or active subscribers in October 2021. Airtel had 346.11 million active subscribers out of its total subscriber base of 353.98 million, which equates to 97.78% of the telco’s subscriber base has been active. According to the monthly performance report from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Airtel’s arch-rival, Reliance Jio, had 358.49 million active subscribers out of its total subscriber base of 426.60 million. This equates to over 84.03% of Jio’s subscriber base being active. Coming to the third private telecom operator, Vodafone Idea (Vi) had 234.33 million active subscribers out of its total subscriber base of 269.03 million, imputing that 87.10% of its subscribers were active.
Reliance Jio’s Active Subscribers Percentage Grew Significantly
Airtel and Vodafone Idea’s VLR subscriber percentage didn’t move much, but Jio has seen a significant gain in the last few months. This is primarily because the telco scraped off some of the inactive numbers from its user base in the September quarter. The increase in the percentage of VLR subscribers would help Reliance Jio in increasing its average revenue per user (ARPU) figure. All the telcos would want their active subscribers to grow each month that goes by. This improves their ARPU ultimately resulting in a higher ARPU. Bharti Airtel has always had better VLR subscriber percentage than Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Reliance Jio. Airtel’s VLR users are close to its active user base. This is something that Jio has never been able to beat Airtel in. However, Jio is closing in on Vodafone Idea and this is something that the third-largest private telecom operator in India needs to keep a close eye at. Vodafone Idea needs more 4G users at a faster rate to improve ARPU further after the tariff hikes.
