Bharti Airtel, India’s second largest telecom operator saw a significant rise in its 4G/5G user base, with a record 3.98 million addition in subscribers, marking the highest increase in a period of 27 months. With this, Airtel’s wireless broadband subscribers have reached 255.07 million in November, as compared to the 251.1 million in October.
Airtel Adds Record 3.98 Million Subscribers
There has also been a low addition of 520,000 users in October which is attributed partly to industry-wide subscriber increases and migration from 2G to 4G/5G services.
Despite the growth, shedding 432,941 users, Airtel has experienced a second consecutive month of active subscriber loss. This has brought its total active base to 374.52 million. Inspite of this, the company managed to add 1.7 million subscribers overall, which includes 2G services to reach a total base of 379.8 million by the end of November.
On the parallel lines, market leader Jio maintained its position as well as momentum. With a total subscriber base reaching 455.81 million, it added 3.45 million subscribers in November, surpassing the numbers in October.
Vodafone Idea too added 0.96 million 4G subscribers to its 224.4 million users. However, it continued to lose its users.
Reaching 1.154 billion, the total subscriber base in India saw a significant increase of 3.3 million, which is also highest in 2.5 years. The three major companies, Jio, Airtel and Vodafone-Idea together added 8.4 million 4G users in total. This has brought the total to 837.52 million by November’s end.
BSNL & Vodafone-Idea Continues to Lose Customers
Losing subscribers for the 23rd consecutive month, BSNL subscribers have dropped to 91.9 million. As per the stock market, the shares of Airtel and Jio have seen a marginal increase whereas that of BSNL and Vodafone-Idea have seen a dip.
The total base of active subscribers rose by 468,150 in November since 90.6 % of 1.154 billion subscribers were active.
When it comes to the active users by end of November, Vodafone Idea and Jio saw increase in the same and reached 198.5 million and 423.3 million respectively.
