Airtel adds 3 times more subscribers than Jio while Vodafone Idea gets net addition first time in 15 months

• Bharti Airtel continued to deliver strong growth in its subscriber additions, adding three times more subscribers than Reliance Jio.
• Overall, Airtel has had more subscribers than Jio for the past six consecutive months.
• Airtel also expanded its lead over Jio when it comes to active subscriber market share – over 97% of its total subscribers are active, while the number is just 79% for Jio.
• Vodafone Idea sprung a surprise by adding subscribers for the first time in the last 15 months.

The price wars in the Indian telecom industry might be fading, but the Mittal vs Ambani rivalry continues to heat up. Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel has beaten Ambani’s Jio for six months straight, adding three times more subscribers than the latter.

According to the telecom subscriber data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for the month of January, 2021, Airtel added 5.9 million subscribers in the month while Jio added only 1.9 million.

This shows Airtel is continuing to grow stronger every month – it has added a lot more subscribers than Jio over the last six months. According to TRAI data, while Airtel added nearly 25 million subscribers between August, 2020 to January, 2021, Jio added only 10 million.

Vodafone Idea also sprung a big surprise by adding 1.7 million new subscribers in the month, finally snapping its 15-month long streak of losing millions of subscribers.


However, the Airtel stock saw tepid reception as the shares were up by less than 1% as of 9:30 am on March 18, 2021.

Airtel is already the market leader when it comes to active subscribers

Airtel currently has a total of 344 million subscribers, while Jio continues to lead with over 410 million subscribers. Vodafone Idea comes in third with 286 million subscribers.


However, when it comes to active subscribers, Airtel has expanded its lead when compared to the previous month, while both Jio and Vodafone Idea have seen marginal declines.

Overall, Airtel has the maximum number of active subscribers in terms of percentage – over 97% of its total subscribers are active. For Jio, this number comes down drastically to 79% while Vodafone Idea is in a much better position at nearly 90%.

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