While Reliance Jio added 2.5 million active connections in July, Vi, formerly Vodafone Idea (down 3.8 million) and Airtel (down 0.45 million) saw declines. India saw a decline of 2.04 million active mobile connections in July 2020. Note that this could be because of multi-SIM usage. The top three telecom operators accounted for about 93% of all active connections.

In terms of the number of connections, Reliance Jio leads with 400.8 million connections, followed by Airtel with 319.9 million connections. Further, Reliance Jio and Airtel added 3.5 million and 3.2 million connections in July 2020. On the other hand, Vi lost over 3.7 million connections.

State-wise data

In terms of active connections, Bihar leads with 96.04% active connections, followed by West Bengal, North East and UP (East). Mumbai has only 53.83% active connections, the lowest among all circles. The UP (East) circle has the highest number of connections, with 99.35 million connections (99,354,745 to be exact). Maharashtra is second with 91.38 million (91,387,655) connections and Andhra Pradesh is third with 86.4 million (86,426,799) connections.

Reliance Jio now has a market share of 35%, followed by Vi with 26%, Bharti Airtel with 28%, and BSNL with 10%.

Active Connections

In July 2020, Airtel, Vi, and Reliance Jio accounted for 93% of total active mobile connections in India, according to data released by TRAI. The active connections data represents peak VLR (Visitor Location Register) data for the month, and in case intra-circle roaming is still operational, might indicate double-counting of users.

Some numbers

• There were 955.84 million active connections in July 2020.
• Airtel has 97% active connections on its network – the highest among all telcos. Airtel has included Tata Teleservices customers on its network.
• Vodafone Idea has the second-highest active connection base, at 89.33%.