After falling behind its competitors in new subscriber addition for a couple of months, the new entrant in Indian telecom space Reliance Jio is back on track. The telco has beaten up other incumbent telcos and topped the chart by adding more than 5.9 million new subscribers to its 4G only network. Contradicting to this, the other Reliance telco, Reliance Communications (RCom) saw a massive drop of more than 5.09 million subscribers from its network. This can be attributed to the sudden closure of RCom network in many parts of the country.
According to the latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), telecom subscription data as on September 2017, Reliance Jio’s subscriber base now stands at 138.6 million and they are growing in an exponential way.
India’s largest telecom operator Airtel was able to add around 1 million new subscribers to its network. But, other top telcos Vodafone India and Idea Cellular lost subscribers during this month. However, Govt telco BSNL showed a positive growth and added around 5.5 lakh new subscribers to its network.
Stats on Telecom Subscription (September 2017)
- The number of telephone subscribers in India declined for the third consecutive month and now stands at 1,206.71 million.
- The total wireless subscriber which also includes GSM, CDMA and LTE subscribers in the country also declined slightly to 1,183.04 million.
- Private telecom operators hold 90.75 percent of Indian telecom market share. Whereas the two PSU telecom operators BSNL and MTNL have been improving their market share and now holds 9.25 percent.
- Reliance Jio added the maximum number of subscribers to its network, followed by Airtel and BSNL.
- On the losing side, RCom topped the chart followed by Tata Teleservices and Telenor.
- Out of the total wireless subscribers, only 1,017.79 million wireless subscribers were active on the date of peak VLR in the month of September 17. The proportion of active wireless subscribers was approximately 86.03 percent of the total wireless subscriber base.
- Airtel retains the top position in India telecom sector with 23.84 percent market share. Followed by Vodafone India with 17.53 percent market share and Idea Cellular with 16.07 percent market share.
- Kerala telecom circle continued to show maximum growth rate in wireless subscribers during the month of September 2017.
- Wireline subscriber base declined to 23.67 million. BSNL top’s the wireline segment with 54.06 percent market share, followed by Airtel with 16.49 percent market share.
- A total of 5.49 million porting requests received by various telcos for Mobile number portability (MNP).
Stats on Indian Broadband (September 2017)
- The number of broadband subscribers, which include both mobile and wired subscribers increased to 324.89 million at the end of September 2017.
- Reliance Jio tops the chart in broadband data market in the country with 138.62 million subscribers. Airtel takes the second spot with 62.29 million data subscribers.
- Counting wired broadband connection, BSNL tops with 9.54 million subscribers. On the second spot, we have Airtel Broadband with 2.12 million subscribers.