Reliance Jio leads in new mobile users, Airtel gains ground; Vi continues decline: TRAI data (2024)

Market leader Reliance Jio continued to outpace nearest rival Bharti Airtel in adding mobile phone users for May, while Vodafone Idea (Vi) lost further ground, telecom regulator’s data showed.

Jio added 2.20 million users (up 0.46% month-on-month), followed by Airtel which added 1.25 million users (up 0.32%), according to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (trai) on Tuesday. Meanwhile, number three player Vi continued to suffer losses, giving away 924,797 users in May (down 0.42%), its largest fall in three months.

Airtel recorded the highest percentage of active subscribers on its network at 99.07%. Active, or visitor location register (VLR), data indicates the number of mobile users regularly using a mobile network.

Airtel’s active user base increased marginally to 387.77 million in May from 386.52 million in April, while Jio’s rose from 474.62 million to 472.42 million in the same period. Vi’s active user base shrank from 219.08 million to 218.16 million, as per Trai data.

In the wireless category, Jio widened its customer market share to 40.60% holding 474.62 million subscribers while Airtel’s rose to 33.17% with a total of 387.77 million. Vi’s share narrowed to 18.66% at 218.16 million users, remaining constant over the previous month.

In both the wireline and wireless category, Jio continued to hold half of all telecom subscriptions, the data showed.

The combination of Airtel and Jio customer gains resulted in India’s mobile user base rising by 0.72% to 931.13 million in end-May.

Jio also consolidated its market leadership in the landline segment recording triple the number of additions than Airtel. Jio added 373,008 wireline users taking its wireline subscriber base to 12.76 million, while second-ranked Airtel added a modest 112,650 totalling 9 million wireline subscribers, as per current Trai data.

As of May-end, there were 52.30 million M2M cellular mobile connections. Airtel has the highest number of M2M connections at 28.64 million with a market share of 54.76% followed by Vi, Jio and BSNL with market share of 27.40%, 12.21% and 5.63% respectively.

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