Airtel continues to add users even as Vodafone and Idea continues to lose
Bharti Airtel remained to add users to its network in December end, bringing its user base to 330.29 million. As per the monthly subscription data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the company had 3.7 million new subscribers in October. Reliance Jio added 2.2 million subscribers to its network, while Vodafone Idea (Vi) lost 2.7 million.
In September, Bharti Airtel was the highest gainer in terms of new subscribers with 3.8 million user gains. In the same month, Reliance Jio added 1.5 million subscribers while Vodafone Idea lost 4.6 million users.
As per the official data for October, the present subscriber base of Jio stands at 406.36 million and that of Vi at 292.84 million. In the wireline segment, Jio tallied 245,912 users, Airtel counted 48,397, and Vi concluded with 9400 users.
Total broadband subscriber base increased 1.17% month-on-month touching 734.82 million. The broadband market share including wired and wireline of the three top operators was Jio 55.53%, Airtel 23.17%, and Vi 16.40%. Mobile number portability (MNP) requests have been raised from 520.8 million in September to 529.60 million in October of this year. Total active mobile users in the nation were 960.91 million as against 958.45 million in September.
Airtel’s huge competitor is losing users: How Jio got in the trap
However, Reliance Jio is reportedly dropping a large number of subscribers, and a majority of these mobile number ports are being overtaken by its competitor, Bharti Airtel. Airtel is witnessing a lot of ports in the rural Punjab belt that is an impact of the news around farmers boycotting Jio.
However, no impact has been recorded in the rest of India. There are no such updates by the authority but the info appears to be in line with the recent call to action by leaders of the farmer protests against India Farm Reforms 2020.
A few months before, the leaders of India Farm Reforms 2020 refused the Indian government’s reply to the farmer demands, besides which they said that the community will also lead to boycott any product or commodity-linked to companies owned by corporate groups of Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani.
A large chunk of this will include mobile phone connections of Reliance Jio, which is India’s largest mobile network operator by market share soon. This will lead to the potential loss of Jio’s user base. This would also be the first real roadblock in the extension trajectory of Reliance Jio, which has developed consistently after propelling for consumers in September 2016.
The key purpose following why the impression from the rest of India is alleged to be restricted may be connected to the very nature of the continuing farmer protests. With the farmer community of Punjab leading the movement against the central government basis the controversial farm bill reforms of 2020, the immediate impact of the proposal may frequently remain focused around the northern outskirts.
While official numbers will be limited on the track at the time, data in the following months by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will exhibit the precise impact that the farmer community may have owned on the operator. Requests for comments conveyed to Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio continued unanswered at the time of publishing this report.
With a sizeable part of mobile phone users supposedly falling out of Reliance Jio to sign up for Bharti Airtel, the operator may also notice its first-ever month on month user base drop in all of its continuation so far. One of Reliance Jio’s biggest boasting circumstances to date has been its low churn rate, which holds for the percentage of users abandoning a network, in contrast to the percentage of people joining it. Besides an expectedly disturbed churn rate for Jio in December, what will also be intriguing to observe is if the result of the boycott motion remains in the following months as well.
