Kolkata: An intense fight is on between the country’s two biggest telcos to grab customers from struggling Vodafone Idea (Vi).
Bharti Airtel, which trailed Reliance Jio on active subscriber market share for a few months, has almost closed the gap and may even overtake it, analysts said.
Airtel is likely to continue gaining more mobile broadband users than Jio, especially as the low-end customer churn, which had driven Jio’s customer gains earlier, has largely stabilised, with scarcely any disruptive tariff offers in 4G VoLTE feature phones in recent times, the analysts said.
They added that the focus has now shifted to deepening average revenue per user from merely widening the user base.
Data from the regulator shows that Airtel was consistently ahead during January-March, but Jio edged ahead from May. Now, Sunil Mittal-led Airtel has narrowed the gap.
Jio’s active user share was 33.2 per cent in September, little changed on-month, with 318 million users. Airtel had a 33 per cent share, up 35 basis points on-month, with 316 million users.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 97 per cent of Airtel’s users were active compared with about 79 per cent for Jio.
Cash-strapped Vi lost 3.4 million active users in September, hit primarily by lower network-related capital expenditure that shackled its ability to compete effectively with Airtel and Jio on the 4G front.
On overall mobile customer additions, though, Jio has consistently stayed ahead of Airtel until recently. It added 17.5 million users in the quarter ended March and 10.8 million subscribers in the June quarter. By comparison, Airtel added 630,000 users in the March quarter and lost 3.8 million users in the June quarter.
However, Airtel turned in a strong operational performance in the September quarter, adding 13.88 million customers, almost double Jio’s 7.3 million additions, helped by a rise in data usage from a coronavirus-fuelled shift to remote working.
“If Airtel continues to outperform Jio and Vi on mobile broadband customer additions, it could gain leadership position on the active subscriber market share metric in the next 2-3 months,” Rajiv Sharma, research head at SBICap Securities, told ET.
Bharti Airtel, which trailed Reliance Jio on active subscriber market share for a few months, has almost closed the gap and may even overtake it, analysts said.
Airtel is likely to continue gaining more mobile broadband users than Jio, especially as the low-end customer churn, which had driven Jio’s customer gains earlier, has largely stabilised, with scarcely any disruptive tariff offers in 4G VoLTE feature phones in recent times, the analysts said.
They added that the focus has now shifted to deepening average revenue per user from merely widening the user base.
Data from the regulator shows that Airtel was consistently ahead during January-March, but Jio edged ahead from May. Now, Sunil Mittal-led Airtel has narrowed the gap.
Jio’s active user share was 33.2 per cent in September, little changed on-month, with 318 million users. Airtel had a 33 per cent share, up 35 basis points on-month, with 316 million users.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 97 per cent of Airtel’s users were active compared with about 79 per cent for Jio.
Cash-strapped Vi lost 3.4 million active users in September, hit primarily by lower network-related capital expenditure that shackled its ability to compete effectively with Airtel and Jio on the 4G front.
On overall mobile customer additions, though, Jio has consistently stayed ahead of Airtel until recently. It added 17.5 million users in the quarter ended March and 10.8 million subscribers in the June quarter. By comparison, Airtel added 630,000 users in the March quarter and lost 3.8 million users in the June quarter.
However, Airtel turned in a strong operational performance in the September quarter, adding 13.88 million customers, almost double Jio’s 7.3 million additions, helped by a rise in data usage from a coronavirus-fuelled shift to remote working.
“If Airtel continues to outperform Jio and Vi on mobile broadband customer additions, it could gain leadership position on the active subscriber market share metric in the next 2-3 months,” Rajiv Sharma, research head at SBICap Securities, told ET.
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