Bharti Airtel added 3.8 million wireless subscribers, more than twice of Reliance Jio’s 1.5 million in the month of September, while Vodafone Idea continued to lose ground, according to latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
This would be the second straight month when Airtel’s user base grew faster than that of Jio.
Airtel’s wireless user base grew 1.17 per cent month-on-month to 326.6 million in September against Jio’s growth of 0.36 per cent to 404.1 million. Vodafone Idea (Vi) lost 4.7 million subscribers and ended September with a user base of 295.5 million, data showed.
India’s telecom sector, in the efforts of enabling policies including more quantum of the spectrum, is set to establish new benchmarks in the next-generation network deployments and service delivery.
Top three operators Jio, Airtel and Vi held 35.1 per cent, 28.4 per cent and 25.7 per cent market shares in that order.
In the wireline segment, Jio was the top gainer with 303,205 additions, far higher than Airtel’s 66,335 million. Thus, Jio’s wireline base with 2.1 million users has reached halfway to that of Airtel’s 4.4 million in the month of September.
Vodafone Idea could lose 50-70 mn subscribers in 12 months; Jio to gain over half of telco’s users: Fitch
Jio remained the operator with the largest inactive subscriber base of 85.9 million, close to 21 per cent of total, in September. Meanwhile, 96.9 per cent of Airtel’s users and 88.4 per cent of Vi’s users were active.
Total broadband subscriber base grew 1.41 per cent month-on-month reaching 726.3 million. Broadband market share of three top operators was Jio 55.9 per cent, Airtel 22.9 per cent and Vi 16.5 per cent.
Mobile number portability requests increased from 512.1 million in August to 520.8 million in September, data showed. https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com
