The Silicon Review ^Asia

Bharti Airtel has sharply narrowed the gap with Reliance Jio on incremental revenue market share (RMS) in the September quarter, underlining the Sunil Mittal-led telco's absorption of tariff hikes taken last December and stronger 4G customer additions. The gap between Airtel and Jio on incremental RMS has more than halved in the September quarter, said sector experts, analysing latest telco financial numbers put out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The recent analyzing TRAI data, said the gap between Airtel and Jio’s incremental RMS has reduced to 14.8 percentage points in the September quarter from nearly 32 percentage points in the April-June period.A key performance metric, the incremental RMS of a company is the portion of increase in industry revenue that accrues to a telco. If incremental revenue market share is higher than other telecom operator’s current RMS, then its revenue share will go up with time, say industry experts.

While Airtel’s incremental RMS at 36% is lower than Jio’s 50.8%, its stronger operational performance, particularly on the 4G customer adds front along with its higher ARPU, sets it on course to further narrow the gap in coming quarters, say analysts. The Sunil Mittal-led telco added over 14 million 4G customers, nearly double that of Jio’s net 7.3 million user adds in the fiscal second quarter.