Jio adds 13.02 mn users in Sept as India’s telecom subscriber base touches 1.19 bn
30 Nov 2018
Telecom subscriber base in India grew by 2.32 million to 1,191.40 million in September, with Reliance Jio continuing its lead in adding new subscribers, as per latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
As per Trai report, the number of total wireless subscribers grew by 2.40 million to 1,169.29 million as of end-September 2018. Reliance Jio was the only gainer in September this year, while Vodafone-Idea was the biggest loser for the month. All other major telcos, including Airtel and BSNL, lost a huge number of their customers.
For Jio, this represented a monthly growth rate of 5.44 per cent, with a total of 13.02 million new subscribers.
"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,189.08 million at the end of August 2018 to 1,191.40 million at the end of September 2018, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.20 per cent," Trai said in its monthly subscriber report.
Reliance Jio’s subscriber base increased to 252.2 million (21.57 per cent market share) while Bharti Airtel continued to hold the highest market share of 29.38 per cent (with 343.5 million customers), but after losing 2.3 million subscribers.
Idea lost 4.06 million customers, taking its market share to 18.23 per cent (213.1 million) while Vodafone lost 2.6 million, taking its share to 18.97 per cent (221.8 million).
State-owned telecom operator BSNL, on the other hand, lost 0.53 million, taking its base to 113.04 million by the end of September - giving it a market share of 9.67 per cent. MTNL also lost 9,435 of its users
RCom, which shut down its telecom services last December, lost 16,349 more subscribers in September. Additionally, Tata Teleservices lost 1.01 million of its users.
The number of total broadband subscribers increased to 481.7 million from about 463.65 million in August. "Top five service providers constituted 97.86 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of Sep-18. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (252.25 million), Bharti Airtel (99.29 million), Vodafone (51.82 million), Idea Cellular (47.90 million) and BSNL (20.12 million)," the TRAI report said.
Looking at only wireless broadband, Reliance Jio, which operates a 4G-only network, led the pack with 252.25 million. Airtel was next with 97.05 million, Vodafone third with 51.81 million, Idea fourth with 47.89 million and BSNL fifth with 10.97 million.
In the wired broadband segment, BSNL leads the market with 9.15 million followed by Airtel with 2.24 million, Atria with 1.36 million, MTNL with 0.80 million, and Hathway with 0.75 million.