Reliance Jio adds 3 mn mobile users, Vi loses 29 lakh subscribers in April: TRAI

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday in the release that Reliance Jio and Airtel were the biggest gainers in subscriber count with 35 lakh new subscribers added between them, while Vodafone Idea lost 29.9 lakh subscribers over the period.

As TRAI released the Broadband and Telephone subscribers’ data for April 2023 showed that the number of mobile connections in India dropped by 0.8 million in April this year, after a jump of 1.96 million in March, the highest in nine months.

Reliance Jio’s subscriber gains were higher than Bharti Airtel in April, with Jio adding 3.04 million mobile subscribers while Airtel recorded 76,328 additions over the same period. Vodafone Idea lost 2.99 million subscribers during the period, causing its mobile user base to decline further to 233.75 million in April-end, the data showed.

According to TRAI data, with Vodafone’s heavy user losses and Airtel’s moderate gains India’s mobile user base fell by 0.07% or 0.79 million to around 1.143 billion in April-end. Overall wireless tele density also slipped marginally to 82.34% in April from 82.46% in March.

Further, the data showed that the total broadband subscribers increased to 850.94 million, recording a total gain of 0.52% during the month. The top five service providers constituted 98.39% of the market share at April's end.

Reliance Jio Infocomm’s user base stood at 441.92 million, Bharti Airtel at 224.37 million, Vodafone Idea at 123.58 million, BSNL at 25.26 million and Atria Convergence at 2.14 million.

In the wireline segment, the total subscribers increased by 0.97 million or 3.44% in April 2023. Reliance Jio added 0.3 million landline users, increasing its landline user base to 9.41 million and Bharti Airtel gained 0.1 million users, taking its landline user base to around 7.25 million. While state-owned BSNL lost almost 94,492 wireline users, reducing its user base to 7.01 million, according to TRAI data.

As per TRAI, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel increased customer market shares to 37.9% and 32.45% respectively over the previous month while Vodafone Idea’s market share decreased to 20.4%.

Meanwhile, in rural India, Jio gained 1.58 million users, Airtel added 0.19 million users, and VI lost 1.41 million subscribers.

Source: Media reports