India’s largest telecom operator Reliance Jio continues on its winning streak of gaining wireless consumers. In August, Reliance Jio gained 649,000 mobile users, leading the subscriber addition tally, according to the latest data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
In comparison, Bharti Airtel added 138,000 users while Vodafone Idea lost 833,000 subscribers during August.
Reliance Jio’s mobile base currently stands at 443.8 million, while that of Bharti Airtel’s is 354.1 million and Vodafone Idea 271 million.
In July, Reliance Jio gained 6.5 million subscribers, cementing its market lead, while Bharti Airtel added 1.9 million customers during the month.
Jio’s subscriber base stood at 443.2 million in July, according to the data. Airtel’s total wireless subscriber count rose to 354 million in July.
Vodafone Idea, which has now got a fresh lease of life with a new telecom package announced recently, lost 1.4 million wireless users during July, as its subscriber count slipped to 271.9 million.
As of July, Reliance Jio has a 37.34 percent wireless market share, Bharti Airtel is at 29.83 percent and Vodafone Idea at 22.91 percent.
Nonetheless, the new wireless additions were muted, while the overall wireless subscriber base in August stood at 1186.72 million, it’s a drop from July figures of 1186.84 million, according to TRAI data.
The muted numbers for wireless additions can be attributed to the recent prepaid tariff hikes by Bharti and Vodafone Idea. In late July, both the telcos had increased their monthly base packs tariffs, making Rs 79 the entry pack.
The increased tariffs led to many low-paying rural customers leaving the network.
In contrast, Jio’s muted numbers could be the company withdrawal of many freebies available earlier for new Jio Phone users.
In terms of active subscribers, Jio has increased its lead over Bharti. As on August, Jio has 350.63 million active wireless subscribers as against 346.84 million of Bharti. For the last couple of months, Jio has been beating Bharti in active wireless subscribers.
In terms of wireless broadband users, Jio’s base stood at 443.86 million, followed by Bharti at 202.27 million, Vodafone Idea at 123.52 million.
In terms of mobile number portability (MNP), the requests continued to be high. The MNP requests stood at 11.28 million in August.
In August, Jio overtook Bharti to become the second-largest wireline broadband provider with 240,000 additions. Bharti added 150,000 wireline broadband subscribers. As in August, the wireline broadband base of BSNL stood at 5.49 million, followed by 3.71 million of Reliance Jio, 3.69 million of Bharti, 1.95 million of ACT and 1.08 million of Hathway Cable.