Reliance Jio adds 108 mn subscribers, but losing steam
20 May 2017
Mukesh Ambani-led telecom start-up Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio) added 108 million subscribers since it was launched seven months ago, in September 2016, but the subscriber additions have now slowed down.
According to the latest data from Trai, Jio added almost 6 million subscribers during March, which although is the highest among the telcos is its lowest since September, when it launched commercial operations.
Jio's subscriber additions in February stood at 12.21 million, which is more than double of what the firm has added in March.
In the first month of its operations, Jio added 16 million subscribers in September, which was followed by 19.6 million in October, 16.3 million in November and its highest subscriber addition so far of 20.3 million in December. The firm had added 18.5 million subscribers in January 2017.
On the other hand, the country's largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel added 3 million subscribers in March, followed by Idea Cellular's 2.1 million and Vodafone India's 1.8 million subscribers.
However, Jio has emerged as the country's largest mobile broadband service provider with a subscriber base of 108.68 million.
Jio is followed by Bharti at 47.04 million, Vodafone (37.71 million) and Idea (24.70 million).
As of March 2017, Bharti's total subscriber base stood at 273.65 million followed by that of Vodafone at 209.06 million and Idea Cellular's subscriber count stood at 195.37 million. Jio's total subscribers stood at 108.68 million as of March.
