The race between telcos to get the most number of subscribers is at an all-time high. The economy of India is in the path towards completely digitising, and the telecom operators don’t want to miss out on the chance to benefit from it. That is why every telco is focusing on adding as many subscribers as it can by providing lucrative new offers and good customer service to the users. One telco, however, which has been continuously losing on subscribers is Vodafone Idea (Vi). But Vi’s loss is an opportunity to grow for Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, and it seems like Airtel has benefitted the most from Vi’s loss — more details on the story ahead.
Jio Leads the Race on Overall Subscriber Additions; Airtel Gains More Active Users
As mentioned above, Airtel seemed to gain the most from Vi’s losses, but to conclude it that way would be a little shortsighted. This is because, in terms of overall new subscriber additions, Jio has been way ahead of Airtel. However, Airtel has gained quite a few points when it comes to active users share in the market. Reliance Jio’s active user share in the market was reported to be 33.2% in September (318 million users). On the other hand, Bharti Airtel had active users share of 33% in the same month (316 million users). The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had reported that Jio’s total active subscriber base stood at 79% as compared to Airtel’s 97%. So even though Jio is adding more number of subscribers, Airtel seems to be closing in on the gap of active users share in the overall market. Whereas Vi is only losing subscribers every month that goes by. A lot of subscribers from Vi are going towards Airtel since the telco has been able to maintain its ‘premium’ image in the market. Everything considered Jio is still ahead of Airtel and Vi in terms of revenue generation. Even though Airtel has a higher average revenue per user (ARPU) than Jio, the latter seems to be doing just better. It is worth noting that Jio has plans for launching new affordable 4G smartphones with Google very soon, that will allow the telco to be more flexible and innovative with its telecom offers related to the smartphone. This, in turn, might give another boost to Jio in the market. Whether or not Airtel will leave behind Jio in the active users share front in the overall market, that only time can tell.
