Airtel pips Jio in January subscriber additions
25 Mar 2019
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Airtel has surpassed Jio in mobile broadband growth for the first time in January 2019, according to the latest figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
Airtel added more subscribers in January than any other Indian telecom service provider. This is a great positive news for Airtel, which has been pushed down by Jio.
At the end of December 2018, Airtel had 97.99 million mobile broadband users, which has increased to 107.96 million at the end of January 2019. This means that Airtel added 9.97 million new users between December 2018 and January 2019.
Jio, on the other hand, had 280.12 million subscribers at the end of December 2018, which has now increased to 289.44 million users. This means Jio added 9.32 million new users during the period.
This the first time that Airtel has managed to overtake jio in subscriber additions ever since Jio entered the market in 2016. Mobile broadband refers to broadband access through mobile devices such as dongles.
Meanwhile the number of telecom users in India exceeded Rs1.20 billion in January.
Until December 2018, Jio was the number 1 player when it came to adding new subscribers.
After losing customers in December, Airtel added 1 lakh new customers in January. Vodafone-Idea, with 3.58 million customers, is the number 1 telecom operator in India as of 31 January 2019.
While Airtel added 29,900 new cable broadband connections, BSNL lost 90,000 cable broadband users. Vodafone added 6,386 new cable broadband users. There are a total of 540 million broadband users in India, of which 521 million are wireless broadband users.
The total number of broadband users in India increased by 4.1 per cent compared to December 2018.
Meanwhile, state-run BSNL has started 4G VoLTE services and has since launched its VoLTE services in selected cities in India. Subscribers in Gujarat who are already using 4G SIM received this message from BSNL, with instructions to activate the service. From now on, BSNL will offer VoLTE services in the districts of Gandhidham and Anjar.
