Jio, Airtel add mobile users in Aug, but growth slow, Vi loses more customers: Trai

Reliance Jio gained 0.65 million wireless customers in August, taking its gross mobile user base to 443.86 million while Airtel’s rose by 0.13 million to 354.19 million. Vi, by contrast, once again lost 0.83 million customers, shrinking its total mobile user base to 271.06 million, indicating the cash-strapped telco’s continuing inability to effectively combat its two stronger rivals.
Jio also boosted its leadership in rural India, adding 0.88 million users in those markets in August, while both Vi and Airtel lost 0.66 million and 0.54 million customers respectively in these geographies, according to latest subscriber data issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Wednesday.

Analysts said both Vi and Airtel saw customer churn in rural markets in August following the tariff hikes they took late-July in the prepaid voice segment. Both telcos had made their base prepaid packs 61% costlier at Rs 79. By contrast, Jio sustained its strong rural show, on the back of decent rural consumer appetite for its cheaper offers on its 4G feature phone, JioPhone, that its older rivals haven’t been able to match.

Jio’s rural mobile user base swelled to 190.88 million in August, while Vi and Airtel’s fell to 137.95 million and 170.77 million respectively.

Airtel and Vi’s rural customer losses, though, marginally dragged overall rural mobile user base, down 0.08% to 536.33 million in August. The urban mobile user base, however, has risen 0.05% to 650.39 million, as both Jio and Airtel added customers after easing of lockdown curbs.

Visitor Location Register (VLR), a key metric reflecting the number of active subscribers on a mobile network, showed that 97.92% of the users were active for Bharti Airtel, 87.24% for Vi and 79% for Jio in August.

Trai data showed Jio and Airtel have marginally widened customer market shares to 37.40% (37.34%) and 29.85% (29.83%) respectively, while Vi’s narrowed further to 22.84% (22.91%) over the previous month respectively.

Data collated by the telecom regulator showed India's mobile user base dipped marginally by 0.11 million to around 1.186 billion in August 2021.