Airtel & Jio lead wireless subscriber growth in Dec; BSNL & Vi lose steam

India's wireless subscriber base increased by 8.21 million in December, led by Bharti Airtel that also has the highest proportion of active users while market leader Reliance Jio also maintained steady growth.

State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Vodafone Idea (Vi) continued to lag, data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday showed.

The country's wireless subscriber base, which includes mobile phone users and fixed wireless access users, stood at 1.26 billion as of December end. Urban areas saw net addition of 6.86 million subscribers in December, while rural regions added 1.35 million users.


Jio remained the country's largest wireless operator with 489.05 million subscribers, followed by Airtel with 463.38 million, Vi with 198.77 million and BSNL with 92.76 million users as of December.

In December, Airtel added about 5.4 million wireless subscribers, while Jio gained nearly 3 million users. In contrast, Vodafone Idea lost around 0.94 million subscribers and BSNL saw a decline of about 0.21 million users.

The number of active wireless subscribers, measured using the Visitor Location Register (VLR) that indicates users actively using mobile networks, stood at 1.16 billion, or about 93.5% of the total wireless base.

Airtel reported the highest activity levels, with nearly 99% of its subscribers active on the network. Jio also reported a high activity ratio, while Vi and BSNL continued to trail on this metric with only 85.3% and 58.2% active users, respectively.

In the broadband segment, which includes both wired and wireless broadband users, total subscribers rose to 1.01 billion at the end of December. Jio led the market with 514 million broadband subscribers, followed by Airtel with 314 million and Vi with 128 million users.