Airtel gained 40 Lakh and Vi lost 57 Lakh customers in December-2020 TRAI Report

Last updated on February 24th, 2021 at 10:13 am

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released telecom subscription data for the month of December 2020 which shows that Airtel again beats its rivals Jio and Vi. The Govt owned PSU BSNL is nowhere in the race and continuously losing customers.

Wireless Customers

The biggest gainer again is Airtel with 40.5 lakh net wireless customers and the biggest loser is Vodafone-Idea (Vi) which lost 56.9 lakh, net customers.  The details of Wireless customers of all four major telecom service providers are as follows.

• Jio added net wireless customers = 4.78 lakh
• Airtel added net wireless customers = 40.5 lakh
• BSNL lost net wireless customers = -2.52 lakh
• Vi lost net wireless customers = -56.9 lakh

The most interesting part of the report is active mobile customers v/s total customers. See the numbers and notice that half of BSNL customers are not active but almost all numbers of Airtel are active.

• Jio has active wireless customers = 80.23%
• Airtel has active wireless customers = 97.1% 
• BSNL has active wireless customers = 51.68%
• Vi has active wireless customers = 90.26%

Due to farmer protests in the country, mobile towers were also damaged in the month of December-2020. It may be the effect of those incidents that few states marked negative growth, as can be seen in the below data. Punjab recorded maximum negative growth.

Wireline Customers

BSNL again lost a major portion of its wireline customers while Jio added maximum customers, the details of Wireline customers of these telecom service providers are as follows.

• Jio added net wireline customers =2.35 lakh
• Airtel added net wireline customers = 0.5 lakh
• BSNL lost net wireline customers = -2.56 lakh
• Vi added net wireline customers = 210 only

Internet Customers

The Broadband services are growing very fast and all TSPs have the following numbers of total broadband customers which include their landline, FTTH, and mobile customers.

• Jio has total Broadband customers =410.84 million
• Airtel has total Broadband customers = 179 million
• BSNL has total Broadband customers = 26.32 million
• Vi has total Broadband customers = 120.77 million

The Wired line Broadband services offer higher download speed. Jio added more Broadband customers while BSNL lost few customers. All TSPs have the following numbers of wired line on copper or fiber broadband customers.

• Jio has total Broadband customers =2.07 million
• Airtel has total Broadband customers = 2.81 million
• BSNL has total Broadband customers = 7.70 million

Cable Operators Broadband Customers

Other than major TSPs, many cable operators have Broadband customers on fiber/ cable or wi-fi and they are continuously adding new customers as per the following details.

• ACT Fibernet has total Broadband customers =1.78 million
• Hathway has total Broadband customers = 1.05 million
• Tikona has total Broadband customers = 0.31 million

It is clear from the report that state PSUs, BSNL is losing its customer base continuously in Wireline as well as Broadband customers in spite of introducing attractive plans while Jio and Airtel are clear gainers. Even the other ISPs ACT, Hathway, etc are able to add more customers to their customer base using broadband.