Bharti Airtel Added More Mobile Users Than Jio In December

For the fifth straight month, Bharti Airtel added the maximum number of wireless users in December. For the month under review, Airtel added 4.05 million wireless subscribers against Reliance Jio's 0.47 million while Vi (formerly known as Vodafone Idea) lost nearly 5.7 million users, according to data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday.

With these additions and discontinuation, total subscribers of Airtel rose to 338.70 million in December, Jio's stood at 408.77 million and Vi's subscriber base fell to 284.25 million.

State-run BSNL lost 253,330 subscribers in December and its base stood at 118.61 million.

In terms of wireless broadband users (4G), Jio's base stood at 408.77 million, followed by Airtel at 176.19 million, Vodafone Idea at 120.77 million.

Visitor Location Register, a key metric reflecting the number of active subscribers on a mobile network, showed that 97.1% of the users were active for Bharti Airtel, 90.26% for Vi and 80.23% for Jio.

Shares of Bharti Airtel rose over 1% to Rs 590 on Friday.