Reliance Jio added more mobile users in July 2021 to snag the market leadership position on the overall user base count from Bharti Airtel.
Jio was aided by strong customer additions in rural markets amid rising demand for its aggressive JioPhone offers.
According to the monthly performance report posted by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Jio added 6.1 million users in July taking its user base to 347 million.
Airtel, in comparison, added 2.3 million, and its resultant user base was a tad lower at 346 million.
Active Subscribers
Though Jio has an edge on 4G subscriber base, however, according to TRAI data, Airtel scores over Jio on account of 97.74 percent of its users being active.
The active user base reflects the actual number of customers actively using a mobile network.
The rate for Jio active users stands at 78.18 percent.
The other operators Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) both saw a drop in active user base in the month of July 2021.
Vi’s active subscriber base shrank from 88.43 percent in June to 87.67 percent in July 2021.
In the same period, BSNL’s active subscriber percentage declined from 50.63 percent to 50.49 percent.
Both companies also lost subscriber numbers. While Vodafone Idea lost 1.43 million subscribers BSNL lost 1.01 million.
Market share
Currently, Jio dominates the Indian telecom sector with a market share of 37.34 percent, followed by Bharti Airtel (29.83 percent), Vodafone Idea (22.91 percent), and BSNL (9.64 percent)
Airtel could have been at the top had it not been saddled with an enormous amount of debt.
On the other hand, Jio’s success stems from adding new users might not mean much if a large percentage of them are inactive. For Jio its users are also low average revenue per user (ARPU) customers.
Rural markets
Out of the total number of new users, 3.48 million garnered by Jio are in rural markets, thereby solidifying the company’s presence there.
What helped Jio has been its competitively priced offers on its 4G feature phone, JioPhone, that others couldn’t match.
In the same market, Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Bharti Airtel lost 0.99 million and 0.41 million customers respectively.
Total number of subscribers
Presently, Jio has a gross user base of 443.21 million, followed by Airtel with 354.05 million.
Vi’s subscriber base in contrast has declined to 271.9 million.
In all, TRAI’s data notes that the mobile user base in India is over 1.186 billion as of July 2021, registering an addition of 6.01 million.