Jio Adds 84.45 Lakh Subscribers In August; Airtel Loses 5.61 Lakh Users: TRAI

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio continued its dominance over its rivals, adding 84.45 lakh mobile phone users in August to take its subscriber base past 34.82 crore. Other telecom players, Airtel and Vodafone Idea lost their subscriber base.

According to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday the market leader Vodafone Idea, the largest telecom operator in terms of subscribers, lost 49.56 lakh subscribers during the month, bringing down its subscriber base to 37.50 crore.

Bharti Airtel, the country’s third largest telecom operator in terms of wireless subscribers, reported 5.61 lakh customers exiting its network, pulling down its subscriber base to 32.79 crore, as per the data.

State-owned operators BSNL and MTNL reported 2.15 lakh and 6.70 thousand subscribers, respectively, leaving its network.

Total number of wireless subscribers increased by 26.83 lakh to 117.10 crore in August, the TRAI data showed.

“As on 31 August, 2019, the private access service providers held 89.78 percent market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, had a market share of only 10.22 percent,” TRAI said in its report.

Total subscribers, including wireless and wireline, grew by 2.54 percent to 119.18 crore in August 2019. In urban areas, it grew at 2.78 percent while in rural areas total subscribers fell by 0.24 percent.

The overall tele-density in India increased from 90.23 per cent in July to 90.34 percent at the end of August 2019. Delhi has maximum tele-density of 241.87 percent, while Bihar has minimum tele-density of 59.93 percent, as per the data.

During the month of August, a total of 48.6 lakh requests were received for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), a facility to switch from one telecom operator to another without changing mobile number. With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 44.74 crore at the end of July to 45.23 crore at the end of August, since implementation of MNP.―Business Today