Airtel Rules the Market with New Subscribers

Author : Ashwin G Shetty

According to the data published by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), Airtel has managed to rope in more new subscribers when compared to Jio for 4 months in a row. It was reported that Airtel managed to gain 4.37 million wireless subscribers and Jio managed to gain 1.93 million wireless subscribers, whereas Vi lost 2.8 million wireless subscribers as of November 2020.

TRAI subscription data shows Airtel increased its market share from 28.68% to 28.9 % while Jio’s market share increased from 35.28% to 35.34 %, and Vi’s market share narrowed to 25.10% from October’s 25.42 %.

On Thursday Airtel announced that it is a first of a kind to use dynamic sharing to operate 5G and 4G concurrently within the same spectrum block. This clearly emphasized 5G readiness of Airtel’s network across all domains - Radio, Core and Transport.

On December 2020 Reliance CEO Mukesh Ambani confirmed that 5G services will be available in India in the second half of 2021 emphasizing the Atma Nirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) approach. We will get to see more on the development of 5G once the spectrum auction takes place in March 2021.

Now with low cost Jio-Google Android phones slated to launch in the first quarter of 2021, how well Airtel can manage to keep up this streak to attract new subscribers will be a crucial factor for Airtel’s survival in coming days.