Reliance Jio has finally managed to increase its active users, thanks to new 4G plans for JioPhone users and aggressive marketing strategy. Notably, this development comes after continuously losing users for three months to India's second-largest telecom operator Airtel.
Reliance Jio added 7.3 million new users, which takes its share to 33.4 percent. The telecom operator has a 332 million active user base, while Airtel added 4.8 million active users during March.
Vodafone-Idea also added subscribers in March; however, the telco lost 0.4 million active users, which has lower its active users base share to 25.75 percent. For the unaware, TRAI, visitor location register or active data shows the number of actual users that are using the network,
The latest active data reflects that Airtel has a 97.72 percent share, while Vi has a 90.13 percent share, and Reliance Jio has only a 78.43 percent share.
Brokerage Firms Views On Reliance Jio Active Users Base
"Jio has seen the highest VLR sub-adds in March as it witnessed month-on-month (MoM) improvement in reported sub-adds across circles. Elevated MNP (mobile number portability) requests in the last two months and increased channel activity indicates Jio might be aggressively targeting subscribers from other networks besides organic growth," brokerage IIFL Securities said in a note.
The firm added that new JioPhone plans helped the telco its user base. It states that Reliance Jio has become very aggressive to get 300 million 2G users from Airtel and Vodafone-Idea. The firm said that there are chances that Jio might increase channel activity to increase the user base.
Another IIFL Securities states that Vodafone-Idea 256 million user base reflected a marginal dip, but it did fairly good better in major cities like Delhi and Mumbai.
The brokerage firm added both Jio and Airtel increased 0.17 million and 0.1 million broadband users in the country, which will take it to the user base to 2.6 million and 3.09 million users.
It is worth mentioning that Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio has an upper hand over Airtel and Vodafone-Idea as the former has a perfect combination of tariffs, offers, and benefits.
Notably, the telecom operator started its journey with free voice calls and data. Then, the launch of JioPhone and its affordable plans changes everything and its plans to bring affordable smartphones might attract 2G users to its 4G services.