Bharti Airtel continues to add maximum quantity of wireless customers, for the fifth month in a row. Airtel added 4.05 million wireless subscribers in December to take its base to 338.70 million, followed by Reliance Jio, which added 478,917 subscribers to take its base to 408.77 million.
With powerful additions, Airtel has also narrowed the gap with marketplace leader Reliance Jio, which has observed its subscriber additions slowing down. Reliance Jio’s wireless marketplace share stood at 35.43% in December, followed by Airtel at 29.36%. Vodafone Idea continues to shed subscribers, losing 5.69 million customers in December. Its all round user base has declined to 284.25 million in the reported period.
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State-run BSNL, also, lost 253,330 subscribers in December and its base stood at 118.61 million.
In terms of wireless broadband customers (4G), Jio’s base stood at 408.77 million, followed by Airtel at 176.19 million, Vodafone Idea at 120.77 million.
Competition for acquiring 4G customers is heating up as mobile operators attempt to add and upgrade more customers. Currently, there are about 300 million 2G customers, mainly on the networks of Airtel, BSNL and Vodafone Idea, who are up for grabs. There had been reports about Jio coming out with a low-price smartphone but so far, no additional facts have come. Airtel is upgrading a lot of of its 2G customers to 4G by supplying profitable tariff plans. Airtel in a current analyst contact stated that it added 14.2 million 4G customers in October-December period.
“There are upgrades from our own 2G base. There is movement from competitors, a little bit of porting that happens and there is some set of customers who are also coming new into the category,” Gopal Vittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel had stated.
Vodafone Idea, which has been regularly losing 2G shoppers, also lost about 190,000 wireless broadband customers in December.
As there is so significantly buyer movement, the MNP requests have also been regularly higher for the previous handful of months. The MNP requests stood at 8.20 million in December. Analysts really feel that the elevated quantity indicate that shoppers are rapidly altering operators in a bid to get a far better deal.
In terms of wireline broadband subscribers, Reliance Jio has been adding the maximum quantity of customers, mainly due to the rollout of its fibre connectivity across the nation. Jio added about 200,000 wireline broadband customers in December followed by 80,000 of Airtel. BSNL lost 30,000 wireline broadband customers. As on December, the wireline broadband base of BSNL stood at 7.70 million, followed by 2.81 million of Airtel, 2.07 million of Reliance Jio and 1.78 million of ACT.