Vi’s bigger rivals, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel continued to gain ground, though, the market leader added more active users in March than the Sunil Mittal-led telco.
Active, or visitor location register (VLR), data put out every month by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) indicates the number of users regularly using a telco’s mobile network.
Latest customer data put out by Trai showed Vi’s active user base was largely unchanged at Rs 175.35 million in March. Jio and Airtel added 5.03 million and 1.5 million active users respectively, boosting their active user bases to 451 million and 389.68 million respectively.
On the gross customer additions score, Jio added more wireless broadband users (2.17 million) than Airtel (1.25 million), propelled by stronger 5G and FWA user gains. Vi continued to suffer losses, resulting in its gross mobile user base shrinking by 0.54 million to 205.36 million. Jio and Airtel’s gross user bases were higher at 469.76 million and 389.80 million respectively in March.Jio also added more fixed wireless access (FWA) users than Airtel in March. Its FWA user base expanded by 0.33 million to 5.57 million while Airtel’s rose by 0.16 million to 1.19 million.Trai data showed Jio widened its customer market share to 40.6% (40.52%) while Airtel’s rose to 33.69% (33.67%) over the previous month. Vi’s narrowed to 17.75% (17.84%).
The combination of Airtel and Jio customer gains resulted in India’s mobile user base rising by 0.28% to 1.163 billion in end-March. Overall wireless tele-density increased to 82.42%.
Trai data also showed 13.54 million users submitted requests for mobile number portability, increasing the cumulative requests to nearly 1119 million by end-March.
