The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India or TRAI as it is popularly known released its Telecom Subscription Data for the month of August 2020. The report shows the market share for all telcos and new user acquisition during that month. Surprisingly, Airtel has managed to add more new subscribers than Jio for the first time in over four years.
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Notably, the Mukesh Ambani-led telecom giant has been leading the subscriber addition chart ever since it was launched in September 2016. However, despite losing out to Airtel when it comes to user acquisition, Jio continues to be the number one telecom operator in the country. Let’s a take a look at the details of the latest Telecom Subscription Data.
Airtel gains more new subscribers than Jio for the first time in four years
Airtel added more users than Jio for the first time in four years
According to the data released by TRAI, Reliance Jio became the first telecom operator to cross the 400 million subscribers in India in July with a total of 402.67 million users. However, the company recorded its lowest ever addition of 1.86 million users in August. Notably, the telco has been adding eight million subscribers on an average almost every month for some time now. Jio also has the lowest active user base compared to Vi and Airtel with only 78.86 percent active users.
Airtel’s subscriber base increased by 2.8 million in the month of August with a total subscriber base of 322.8 million users. Airtel has 28.12 percent market share as compared to 35.08 percent share of Jio. However, Airtel has the highest number of active users with 96.85 percent of total user base being active.
On the other hand, Vodafone Idea or Vi continues losing users in the month of August 2020. With 1.23 million subscribers lost, Vi now has 300.15 million users in India or 26.15 percent market share. However, the telco has 88.18 percent active users, which is impressive. BSNL and MTNL have 118.91 and 3.34 million users with 52.05 percent and 18.39 percent active users, respectively.
According to the data released by TRAI, the three private telecom operators together held 89.35 perent market share, whereas, the state-run telcos (BSNL and MTNL) had a market share of 10.65 percent only.
| Telco | Market Share | User Base | Users gained | Active Users |
| Jio | 35.08% | 402.67 million | 1.86 million | 78.86% |
| Airtel | 28.12% | 322.8 million | 2.9 million | 96.85% |
| Vi | 26.15% | 300.15 million | -1.23 million | 88.18% |
| BSNL | 10.36% | 118.82 million | 2.148 lakhs | 52.05% |
| MTNL | 0.29% | 3.34 million | 6,000 | 18.39% |