Airtel Gains More Users Than Jio In July; Vi Is Left Behind

Bharti Airtel edged out Reliance Jio to add the most mobile subscribers in July, according to fresh data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Airtel added 26.9 lakh mobile subscribers during the month, taking its total user base to 48.95 crore. Jio followed closely, gaining 24.5 lakh users to reach 50.60 crore subscribers. Together, the two telecom operators accounted for nearly 51.4 lakh of the 55.4 lakh net mobile subscriber additions recorded across the country in July.

Vodafone Idea added 2.40 lakh subscribers, pushing its base to 19.91 crore, while state-run BSNL gained 1.69 lakh users to reach 9.32 crore. MTNL was the only operator to see a decline, losing 5,744 subscribers during the month.

India's overall wireless mobile subscriber base rose from 128.24 crore at the end of June to 128.79 crore at the end of July, TRAI data showed.

Vodafone Idea's subscriber base expanded by 0.12% in July, extending a trend of gradual improvement for the debt-laden carrier. In comparison, Airtel's base grew by 0.55%, Jio's by 0.49% and BSNL's by 0.18% during the same period.

Jio retained its lead in the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) category, adding 1.56 lakh subscribers to take its base to 92.7 lakh. Airtel added 1.17 lakh users to its 5G FWA base, which stood at 39.4 lakh by the end of July. The two companies together added 2.73 lakh 5G FWA subscribers during the month.

Jio also added 2.04 lakh subscribers to its UBR-based FWA service, taking that base to 51.4 lakh. It remains the only telecom operator to report UBR FWA numbers to TRAI.

In the machine-to-machine (M2M) segment, Airtel continued to lead with an addition of about 16.8 lakh connections, taking its total to 8.45 crore. Jio added roughly 8 lakh M2M connections to reach 2.66 crore, while Vodafone Idea and BSNL added about 3 lakh and 2 lakh connections respectively, taking their bases to 2.19 crore and 47.7 lakh. Total M2M connections across the industry rose by 29.7 lakh to 13.77 crore.

Active Users Cross 120 Crore

The active wireless subscriber base, tracked through peak visitor location register (VLR) data, rose by 29.5 lakh during July to touch 120.4 crore, up from 120.1 crore in June. Active users made up 93.48% of the total mobile subscriber base by the end of July, slightly lower than 93.66% a month earlier.

Based on TRAI's operator-wise data, Airtel added about 19.3 lakh active users during the month, followed by Jio with around 11.6 lakh and Vodafone Idea with about 1.82 lakh. BSNL, however, saw its active subscriber base fall by roughly 4.28 lakh, even as its total subscriber count grew, after its VLR ratio dropped to 55.02% in July from 55.58% in June.

India's overall telecom subscriber base, including both wireless and wireline connections, rose by 62 lakh to reach 135.4 crore by the end of July. Wireless subscriptions, comprising mobile and FWA services, grew by 60.2 lakh during the month.