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Jio added the highest number of active mobile users among India’s top telcos in February for the eighth month in a row, taking its active user base to 379 million, latest customer data put out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India<\/a> (Trai) showed. Bharti Airtel<\/a>’s active user additions were at 1.2 million, taking its active user base to 351 million.
In contrast, Vodafone Idea<\/a> (Vi) lost nearly 3 million such users -- the most in metro and category A-circles -- reducing its active user base to 226 million, underlining its continuing inability to compete with Jio and Airtel.
Active, or visitor location register<\/a> (VLR), data put out every month by Trai reflects the number of subscribers actively using a mobile network.
Jio thus further extended its lead over Airtel with a 37.3% share of the active user market in February, against the rival’s 34.6%. Loss-making Vi’s active user share dipped a few decimal points to 22.2%.
“Jio's active subscriber leadership has been driven by the discount it offers vs Bharti, and also Bharti's sharp tariff hikes in the prepaid voice segment,” brokerage Jefferies said in a note. ICICI Securities added that the telco’s active subs net-adds indicated that it had not been impacted by SIM consolidation from December 2021 tariff hike.
J M Financial added that Airtel’s modest active user base growth was “due to outsized churn in lower-ARPU segments,” after sharp hikes in entry-level prepaid tariffs taken in July\/November 2021. “Airtel’s management has attributed this to tariff hike-led SIM consolidation and hopes it will normalise in the next few months,” the brokerage said.