Shocking! Jio Lost Record 1.9 Crore Users In 30 Days; Airtel Gets 2.7 Lakh New Users

TRAI reported that Reliance Jio lost over 19 million wireless subscribers in September.

Its gross user base is now down to 424.83 million.

Airtel And Vi

Airtel on the other hand added 0.27 million wireless customers, taking its gross user base to 354.46 million.

But despite its loss of subscribers, Jio still maintains more active subscribers than Airtel for the third month.

Vodafone Idea shares its woes with Jio since it has lost another 1.07 million, lowering its user base to 269.99 million amidst its ongoing struggles in the 4G space.

Rural Markets

In rural areas, Jio’s presence is reduced by 6.6 million users.

Airtel and Vi have suffered smaller losses at 0.78 million and 0.74 million respectively.

Jio’s rural mobile user base fell to 184.29 million while Airtel and Vi’s dipped modestly to 169.99 million and 137.21 million respectively.

Jio’s Rural Presence

Jio has been building on its rural presence boosted by strong rural consumer appetite for aggressive offers on its older 4G feature phone, JioPhone.

However, the September figures show that the telco also weeded out low-paying users in the rural markets.

It found that a “large number of people at the bottom of the pyramid have not been able to stay up-to-date with recharges,” said Reliance Jio Infocomm President Kiran Thomas.

So, the effect of these people who have stopped recharging two quarters before is now getting reflected in its subscriber count.

Tariff Hikes

Airtel has introduced tariff hike of up to 25% for its popular prepaid plans and Vi is expected to follow suit.

This will further weed out low-paying users which could be reflected in substantial reduction in users in the coming months.

Airtel’s revised prices will come into effect from November 26.

Its 1.5GB data per day for 84 days plan now costs ?719, up from ?598.

This is nearly 30% costlier than the same plan offered by Jio which costs Rs 555.

Data Speed

Jio takes the lead in terms of download speeds with 20.9 Mbps on 4G.

It is trailed by Vodafone Idea which offers an average downloading speed of 14.4 Mbps.

Airtel comes in at third with 11.9 Mbps speed.

Rankings regarding upload speeds are led by Vodafone Idea with 7.2 Mbps data speed.

It is followed by Reliance Jio with an upload speed of 6.2 Mbps and Bharti Airtel 4.5 Mbps.