While Airtel added 3.75 million active connections in February, Vi, formerly Vodafone Idea (down 0.23 million) and Reliance Jio (down 0.17 million) saw declines. India saw a growth of 3.3 million active mobile connections in February 2021. Note that this could be because of multi-SIM usage. The top three telecom operators accounted for about 94% of all active connections in India.
In terms of the number of connections, Reliance Jio leads with 414.99 million connections, followed by Airtel with 348.3 million connections. Further, Reliance Jio and Airtel added 4.3 million and 3.7 million connections in February 2021. On the other hand, Vi added only over a half-million connections.
State-wise data
In terms of active connections, West Bengal leads with 90.86% active connections, followed by North East, Maharashtra and UP (East). Mumbai has only 69.26% active connections, the lowest among all circles. The UP (East) circle has the highest number of connections, with 99.77 million connections (99,777,976 to be exact). Maharashtra is second with 94.06 million (94,062,844) connections and Andhra Pradesh is third with 88.06 million (88,064,386) connections.
Reliance Jio now has a market share of 36%, followed by Bharti Airtel with 30%, Vi with 24%, and BSNL with 10%.
Active Connections
In February 2021, Airtel, Vi, and Reliance Jio accounted for 94% of total active mobile connections in India, according to data released by TRAI. The active connections data represents peak VLR (Visitor Location Register) data for the month, and in case intra-circle roaming is still operational, might indicate double-counting of users.
Some numbers
- There were 981.9 million active connections in February 2021.
- Airtel has 97.47% active connections on its network – the highest among all telcos. Airtel has included Tata Teleservices customers on its network.
- Vodafone Idea has the second-highest active connection base, at 90.61%.
