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Kolkata: After a fierce fight over several months, Reliance Jio<\/a> has wrested market leadership from state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL<\/a>) in the country’s home broadband<\/a> turf in a neck-and-neck contest that has relegated Bharti Airtel<\/a> to the third spot.
The Mukesh Ambani-led telco added 0.19 million JioFibre<\/a> customers in November 2021, taking its fixed broadband user base to 4.3 million, overtaking both BSNL (4.2 million) and Bharti Airtel<\/a> (4.1 million) and emerging as the country’s No 1 wired broadband operator in just about two years of launching the service commercially, Nomura Research said in a research note seen by ET.
The Japanese brokerage was analysing latest telco subscriber data put out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India<\/a> (Trai).
Data collated by the sector regulator shows Jio<\/a> had initially pulled ahead of Airtel in the home broadband users count last August and had kept consolidating its lead in subsequent months. It, though, had continued to trail BSNL till October 2021.
But things changed in Jio’s favour after the state-run telco lost a whopping 0.5 million home broadband customers in November, unable to withstand relentless competition from both private carriers on the fibre-based wired broadband services market. Airtel, in fact, also added 0.1 million home broadband users in November and is snapping at the state-run telco's heels.
Jio’s home broadband subscriber market share was higher at 17.8% end-November, compared to BSNL’s 17.2% and Airtel’s 16.7%, ICICI Securities said, analysing the latest Trai data.
Airtel, though, added the maximum number of active mobile users among the top telcos in November 2021, offsetting the impact of sharp hikes in base prepaid tariffs taken around late-July. Jio, though, managed to retain its market leadership on the overall active user base and active user share scores.
The Sunil Mittal-led telco added 1.8 million active users, taking its November active user base to 348 million. Jio saw a slowdown in active users adds at 1.1 million, but its November active user base remained the highest at 360 million, Trai data showed.
Jio also expanded its lead over Bharti Airtel (34.9%) on the active users market share front to 36.1% in November. By contrast, Vodafone Idea (Vi) lost a whopping 2.7 million active users, further shrinking its active user base to 232 million and its active user share to 23.2%.
Active or ‘visitor location register' (VLR) data put out every month by the telecom regulator reflects the actual number of customers actively using a mobile network.
“It looks like the tariff hike (in the base 2G prepaid packs) is hurting Vi’s sub base;” ICICI Securities said in a note.
Analysts, in fact, expect Airtel and Vi’s active user adds levels to remain subdued in the coming months with the doubling of base prepaid voice tariffs to Rs 99 between July and November, 2021.
The overall active mobile user base of the sector was flattish at 996 million.
Analysts also noted that Jio’s 4G (read: mobile broadband) user additions were the highest among peers in November.
“Jio added the highest 2 million MBB subs in Nov-21 to remain the market leader with a 55.2% share, while Bharti’s rose by 1.3 million, causing the latter’s MBB market share to inch up to 26.6%,” Nomura said in its note.
By comparison, Vi, India’s sole loss-making telco, lost 0.1 million 4G subs, reducing its MBB subs’ market share to 15.8%, the brokerage added.