Airtel trumps Jio again on active user adds in February

Bharti Airtel may have fallen behind rival Reliance Jio in overall subscriber additions for February but has added the most number of active users for the third straight month, analysts said.

Airtel added 3.7 million active users, taking its active user share to 34.6% and its active user base to 340 million in February. By contrast, Jio lost 0.2 million active users, dragging its overall active users base down to 324 million and its active user market share slipped to 33%, an analysis of latest subscriber data put out by the telecom regulator showed.

Loss-making Vi, which added gross users in February — for the second time only in the past 30 months — also lost 0.2 million active users, lowering its active user share to 26.1% and its active user base dipping to 256 million.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) active or ‘visitor location register’ (VLR) data, is a key metric that reflects the actual number of customers actively using a mobile network. Latest VLR ratio showed up to 97.47% for Airtel, 90.61% for Vi and 78.16% for Jio.

“Bharti is widening its lead in active subs market share against Jio and its mobile broadband subs market share also rose 40bps to 28.4% on active basis in February, while Jio’s dipped 30bps to 49.8%, the first time below 50% since its commercial launch,” ICICI Securities said, analysing latest customer data put out by Trai.

It added that Jio losing 0.2 million active users in February explains its renewed aggression to push the JioPhone. Jio recently launched two aggressive offerings on its 4G feature phone that were aimed to arrest the sharp slide in its 4G user adds in recent quarters, with Airtel gaining far higher numbers.

Kotak Securities said on “a cumulative basis over the past six months, Bharti’s mobile broadband subscriber additions at 28.8 million have eclipsed Jio’s addition of 12.3 million users”.

Analysts said this signals that Airtel continues to trump Jio in the fight for Vi’s customers and also improving the quality of its customer gains.

Kotak, though, said that recent significant spectrum acquisitions by Bharti Airtel and Jio would further compound woes for Vi, which continues to lag on investments in network infrastructure, given persisting delays in its capital raising plans which makes it more vulnerable to near-term headwinds from a second Covid wave.

Jio continues to be the number one telco, having ended the March quarter with 426.2 million 4G users, adding 15.4 million subscribers, reflecting strong acceptance of its recent JioPhone offers. Airtel and Vi haven’t yet declared their numbers as of March end.