In Short:
In January 2024, Airtel added more active mobile users than Jio, but Jio added more higher-paying 4G and 5G users. Vi continued to lose users. Airtel and Jio added 3.55 million and 1.1 million active users, while Vi lost 1.72 million. Customer market shares for Jio and Airtel increased, while Vi’s narrowed. Overall, India’s mobile user base rose. Jio also led in the landline segment.
Telecom Report: Airtel Leads in Monthly Customer Additions
In the latest monthly customer data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Airtel has added more active mobile users than Jio in January 2024. However, Jio added more higher-paying 4G and 5G users during the same period. On the other hand, Vodafone Idea (Vi) continued to see a decline both in active mobile users and 3G/4G users.
Key Highlights:
- Airtel: Added 3.55 million active users in January 2024, with a total active user base of 381.09 million.
- Jio: Added 1.1 million active users in the same month, with a total active user base of 425.61 million.
- Vi: Lost 1.72 million active users, bringing its total active user base down to 194.96 million.
Further data showed that Jio and Airtel added 4.18 million and 2.39 million 4G/5G users respectively, while Vi lost 0.51 million 3G/4G users in January. Jio’s gross user base increased to 463.99 million, Airtel stood at 382.48 million, and Vi’s user base decreased to 221.52 million.
Jio secured a larger market share at 39.97% compared to Airtel’s 32.95% and Vi’s 19.09%. The overall mobile user base in India saw a 0.19% increase to nearly 1.161 billion by the end of December, with wireless tele-density reaching 83.05% in January 2024.
Landline Segment:
In the landline segment, Jio led with an addition of 0.25 million wireline users in January, bringing its total landline user base to 11.29 million. Airtel followed with 0.1 million additions, reaching approximately 8.41 million. Meanwhile, BSNL added 0.36 million wireline users, boosting its total to 6.5 million.
