Bharti Airtel sees more wireless additions via M2M vs Jio in last seven months: IIFL Securities
Bharti Airtel
has seen 70% of its wireless subscriber gains through the machine-to-machine (M2M) segment over the last seven months, compared to just 30% for its closest rival
Reliance Jio
, according to
IIFL Securities
.
'While Jio and Bharti have added similar wireless subs in the last seven months, the mix is quite different. 70% of Bharti's additions are M2M, probably due to its larger Enterprise presence vs 30% for Jio,' the brokerage firm said in a research note analysing the latest subscriber data put out by the
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
(
TRAI
).
ETTelecom
has reviewed a copy of the research note.
The sector regulator started disclosing M2M connections, which include postpaid SIMs used in remote sensors, tracking devices, and others, from April 2024. These SIMs typically have an average revenue per user (ARPU) of less than ₹10.
TRAI's subscriber report, collated and released every month, includes M2M SIM count for Jio and Vodafone Idea (Vi), but not for Airtel. The Sunil Mittal-led telco posts M2M subscribers under Airtel Business, its enterprise unit, in segmental reporting, the brokerage noted.
As per IIFL, Jio's mobile subscriber base (including M2M) increased from 460 million in October 2024 to 475.1 million in May 2025. During the same period, Airtel grew by 414.5 million to 430.4 million, while Vi declined from 210.5 million to 204.4 million.
According to IIFL's analysis, Airtel's M2M subscriber base increased from 29.1 million in October 2024 to 40.1 million in May 2025, followed by Vi, which saw an increase from 15 million to 16.8 million, while Jio's M2M users increased from 9 million to 13.5 million during the same period. State-controlled
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
's (
BSNL
), on the other hand, grew from 3.1 million to 3.4 million.
Industry-wide M2M subscribers rose from 56.1 million in October 2024 to nearly 74 million in May 2025.
Airtel has a M2M market share of 54.31%, followed by Vi (22.74%), Jio (18.31%), and BSNL (4.63%), TRAI said.
Furthermore, IIFL estimated that Jio's fixed wireless access (FWA) subscribers may have crossed the 7.5 million mark in June, surpassing US carrier T-Mobile, which had 6.85 million in the March 2025 quarter and has been adding 0.4 million per quarter.
ICICI Securities also recently said that Jio is expected to have become the dominant FWA provider by subscribers globally, overtaking even T-Mobile, at the end of June.
The Mukesh Ambani-driven telecom company's fibre and FWA subscriber base stood at 19.4 million, followed by Airtel (10.8 million).
IIFL also found that fixed broadband accounted for a chunk of data traffic on Jio's fifth-generation (5G) network in the fiscal quarter that ended March 31, 2025.
'With 85% of Jio's FWA base on 5G (rest on UBR) and monthly per-capita data usage of 400GB, we estimate 5G FWA accounted for ~23% of 5G data traffic. With FWA ARPU per-capita data usage >10x of 5G mobile but ARPU being just 50% higher, it is not surprising that telcos are resorting to UBR for a part of their FWA rollout,' it added.
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