Airtel Gains the Most Subscribers for 6th Straight Month

January 2021's data is up on TRAI and it is again a strong outing for Bharti Airtel. The telco added almost 6 million new subscribers, taking its total user base to 181.7 million. This is the sixth straight month in which the telco has gained the most users across the market. Its market share and active user base also marginally improved over January.

Airtel's Strong Connection with the Users

The telco has been smart with its advertising and offers over the time and that has it gaining the most over a six month period going as far as September 2020. The Sunil Mittal-led telco added 5,892,855 new subscribers during January 2021, which was around 1.74% of its total subscriber base. This gain takes its total base to 181.7 million and the market share to 29.62%.

What's more, Airtel had over 97% active subscribers, which is the highest ratio across the whole sector. Vodafone Idea comes in at second as it has over 89% active users while Reliance Jio has only 79%.

Airtel bolstered its substantial spectrum holdings during the recently concluded 4G spectrum auction. It had sub-1 GHz frequencies as the focus, no doubt in preparations for 5G. It is also upping its infrastructure as it recently awarded a huge contract to Huawei for the same.

But given its recent struggles and high AGR dues pending to the Government, the telco has still outperformed the rest of its competition.

Overall, in the month of January, there were 9.64 million new users on wireless. The latest data shows there are 1.163 billion total wireless subscribers, with an urban tele-density at 135%. Out of total users, 978.68 million were active users - that is 84.15%.