4G additions: Bharti Airtel plays catch-up with Reliance Jio

The subscriber addition trends for June and July show that while incumbent Bharti Airtel is catching up well with Reliance Jio on the 4G front, Vodafone Idea is losing out. For incumbents like Bharti Airtel and Vi, the real challenge is to be able to migrate their 2G subscribers to 4G. Jio, which started out in September 2016 as a fully 4G network, has an advantage on this front.

The latest trend in the 4G customer addition front clearly establishes the strong points of Jio and Bharti. While Jio has an edge in terms of coverage, Bharti has an advantage when it comes to attracting high-data usage customers in urban areas because it has been able to create capacity. However, Vodafone Idea needs to invest in its network to create more capacity or else it would continue to face subscriber churn.